Home Planetarium Survey intsallation images

The Cabinet's inaugural installation, Heidi Neilson's "Home Planetarium Survey"


collection of toy planetariums


the collection is accompanied by a survey catalog, self-published by the artist.
(available through AHN|VHS)

Heidi Neilson "Home Planetarium Survey"

The Cabinet inaugural exhibition:

Heidi Neilson
Home Planetarium Survey
August 7 - September 27, 2009
Opening Friday August 7th, 7-10pm




For the inaugural exhibition at The Cabinet, artist Heidi Neilson presents Home Planetarium Survey, a display of seven toy planetariums and photograms of the constellation Orion as projected by the planetariums. Home Planetarium Survey is accompanied by a limited edition digital-offset printed saddlestitch bound book produced by the artist.

Using this iconic constellation and its easily identified belt as the basis for comparison reveals just how perception may be affected by the lens through which the world is viewed. The seven home planetariums: Orbiter Motorized Planetarium and Talking Film Projector, model ORPTS; Oshizorakodu Planetarium Kit. Tomy Co.; National Geograhic Society Star Planetarium. Uncle Milton Industries.; Portable Junior Planetarium No. 6500. Harmonic Reed Corporation.; Our amazing Home Planetarium. Educational Design, Inc.; Haro Planetarium. Banpresto Co.; Otona no Kagaku Planetarium Kit. Gakken Co.

more information at www.heidineilson.com
books available at www.AHNVHS.com

The Cabinet

The Cabinet is a new project space offering a unique twist on traditional modes of exhibition.
On a bi-monthly basis selected artists will be invited to create site-specific installations for the inside of an antique curio cabinet. Drawing inspiration from the history of exhibition spaces and/or engaging the form of the cabinet and its interactive potential, artists are invited to interpret and utilize the space of
The Cabinet in any way they please.

Cabinets of Curiosity and Wunderkammern were early modes of display, for both natural and man-made objects, and are the precursors to today's museums. These cabinets or rooms were packed to the brim with a range of bizarre artifacts: tokens from the new world, ancient and fabled relics, to medical oddities and exceptional artistic creations. Often so fabulous as to defy established categorization and pushing the boundaries of fact and fiction, cabinet contents were given a status in between the two as curiosities and wonders. It is the imaginative authoring of these microcosmic histories and the miniature presentation of complete taxonomies that is the most intriguing legacy of the Cabinet of Curiosity, as the fundamentals of categorization and perception are called in to question.


Inaugural exhibition: August 2009