Museum of Small Finds, Talbot, Cromwell

From my review of “The Museum of Small Finds" at Machines with Magnets in Pawtucket, plus paintings by Dan Talbot of Providence and Lawrence Cromwell of Baltimore at the Chazan Gallery at the Wheeler School in Providence:

The apparent inspiration for “The Museum of Small Finds” at Machines with Magnets is a Renaissance cabinet of wonders — odd collections of art, artifacts, and natural history specimens that were precursors to today’s museums — and freak shows. In recent decades, as museums have grown ever more like children’s activity centers and less dusty and strange, artists and curators craving the old halls of mystery have started creating their own.

Read the rest here.

“Lo! A Collection of Secreted Tales and Objects of Wonder” at “The Museum of Small Finds,” Machines with Magnets, 400 Main St., Pawtucket, Rhode Island, Oct. 3 to 31, 2008.
“New Work: Dan Talbot and Lawrence Cromwell,” Chazan Gallery at the Wheeler School, 228 Angell St., Providence, Oct. 16 to Nov. 5, 2008.

Pictured from top to bottom: Kendra Plumley’s skulls at “The Museum of Small Finds”; Dan Talbot, “R + S's house (Carriage house, Airstream and Yellow Mercedes)”; and Lawrence Cromwell, “Huff-n-Puffitus.”