The Spy Museum, the Vacuum Cleaner Museum, the National Mustard Museum—not to mention the Art Institute, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Getty Center: museums have never been more robust, curating just about everything there is and assuming a new prominence in public life. The Return of Curiosity explores museums in the modern age, offering a fresh perspective on some of our most important cultural institutions and the vital function they serve as stewards of human and natural history. Reflecting on art galleries, science and history institutions, and collections all around the world, Nicholas Thomas argues that, in times marked by incredible insecurity and turbulence, museums help us sustain and enrich society. Moreover, they stimulate us to think in new ways about our world, compelling our curiosity and showing us the importance of understanding one another. Thomas looks at museums not simply as storehouses of old things but as the products of meaningful relationships between curators, the public, history, and culture. These relationships, he shows, don’t always go smoothly, but they do always offer new insights into the many ways we value—and try to preserve—the world we live in. The result is a refreshing and hopeful look at museums as a cultural force, one that, by gathering together paintings, tropical birds, antiques, or even our own bodies, offers an illuminating reflection of who we are.

Published to accompany an exhibition held at the V & A, 23 September - 5 December 2004.

G. E. Rumphius, also known as the "Indian Pliny," was one of the great tropical naturalists of the seventeenth century. Born in Germany, he spent most of his life in the employ of the Dutch East India Company, stationed on the island of Ambon in eastern Indonesia. He wrote two major works; this one, the first modern work on tropical fauna, was published posthumously in Dutch in 1705. A classic text of natural history, it is now available in English for the first time. The descriptions in The Ambonese Curiosity Cabinet cover the gamut of organisms found in the seas surrounding Ambon--crabs, shrimp, sea urchins, mussels--as well as minerals and rare concretions taken from animals and plants. A series of exquisite etchings accompanies the descriptions. The book has been masterfully translated and extensively annotated by E. M. Beekman, whose introduction provides the first biography of Rumphius in English that incorporates new material.

Throughout, Blier pushes African art history to a new height of cultural awareness that recognizes the complexity of traditional African societies as it acknowledges the role of social power in shaping aesthetics and meaning generally.

The Copeland Collection of 134 Chinese and Japanese ceramic figures, perhaps the most important assemblage of its kind still in private hands, is recognized internationally for the superb quality of its many rare forms. Acquired by Mrs. Lammot du Pont Copeland over the past fifty years, each of these beautifully modeled human and animal figures testifies to the unerring eye of a premiere collector.The majority of these figures are of porcelain, produced during the late seventeenth to the late eighteenth centuries, principally for export to the West. Each individual piece displays the meticulous artistry, the marvelous enameling, and the animation and wit characteristic of this remarkably innovative period in ceramic history However modest in scale, many are important works of art.--Amazon.com.