This short presentation deals with the history of the Kunstkammer in modern museums and provides a brief overview of its development from the nineteenth century to the present day, as well as the curatorial approaches that can be observed. In the nineteenth century, Kunstkammern had by no means fallen into oblivion, but continued to exist under new conditions and with the loss of their encyclopedic concept in the newly emerging museums. In the twentieth century, this concept was investigated once more, and various curatorial approaches were developed to revive the Kunstkammer in museums, with a focus ranging from authenticity to fiction.
Sarah Wagner is an art historian specialising in the cultural technique of collecting, collection documentation and semantic knowledge modelling. She has been working in academic institutions in the fields of exhibition and collection development since 2012. Recently, she published her dissertation on the history and development of the Kunst- und Wunderkammer in the museum. She currently works at the FAU Competence Center for Research Data and Information, Erlangen.
The “Wunderkammer”-Collection of Nora Watteck from Salzburg through the ages and its museological reconstruction today
The master thesis ‘A cabinet of curiosities in the 20th century? The Nora Watteck Collection of Salzburg’ (2025), offered an initial survey of the Nora Watteck Collection, in close cooperation with the Bergbau- und Gotikmuseum Leogang in Austria. The work focussed primarily on the history of the collection’s development, composition, museum reconstruction and current presentation in the exhibition space.
For a long time, the collection of Nora Watteck (1901–1993) remained in the family; was opened to the public at the Bergbau- und Gotikmuseum Leogang in 2021. Nora Watteck inherited many objects from the collection of her grandfather, the Salzburg antique dealer Wenzel Swatek (1847-1913). After her death in 1993, the collection was preserved by her son Arno Watteck (*1926), even though the composition of the collection has undergone several changes since 1870.
This short presentation offers multi-layered reflections on the constitution of historical collections, their incorporation into museum displays, and on the epistemic and identity-forming processes of collecting. At the intersection of reconstruction, staging, and recontextualisation, the museum presentation raises questions about the construction of historical spaces, the possibilities of the ‘historical authenticity’ of collections, and of the mechanisms of museum presentation. How can such a collection be preserved in its composition and under which parameters can it be reconstructed and exhibited.
Laura Dieckmann M.A. studied cultural analysis and cultural mediation at the Technical University of Dortmund. Since completing her master’s degree in May 2025, she has been working on the preparation of her doctoral thesis supervised by Prof. Dr. Kirsten Lee Bierbaum at TU Dortmund University. Her thesis will examine the role of objects made from animal materials in cabinets of curiosities and pre-modern systems of knowledge and historical human-animal relations.
Her areas of research focus on interdisciplinary cultural studies, museology, collection research, early modern cabinets of curiosities as well as the history of visualisation and materialisation of scientific knowledge.
For more information and source: https://www.collectingcentraleurope.org/programme/
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