This study questions whether the appropriation of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century model of the wunderkammer can function as a radical curatorial tool for experimentation and recovery at a time when progressive museum and exhibition practice has been thoroughly institutionalized. Privileging ambiguity over didacticism, the loose interpretative structure of the wunderkammer is explored as an alternative to the disciplinary culture of the Universal Survey museum and White Cube formats. While the wunderkammer has been deployed in museums and biennials over the past thirty years, there are vast differences as to how it has been used and to what critical effect. The efficacy of this curatorial tactic is evaluated in relation to one contemporary museum and two large-scale exhibitions connected with high-profile recurrent exhibition models. In doing so, this study questions why the wunderkammer has emerged as an alternative exhibitionary framework at this historical moment and asks how it can contribute to a more politicized cultural practice within the museum.

The degree to which the adaptation of wunderkammer mechanisms can affect change within current museum and exhibition practice is examined in relation to David Wilson's Museum of Jurassic Technology (MJT), Los Angeles; Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev's the Brain (2012) component of dOCUMENTA (13); and Massimiliano Gioni's Encyclopedic Palace , the 2013 iteration of the Venice Biennale. While the MJT focuses on the role of museal procedures---institutional narratives, display technologies, and didactics---in the production of meaning, the Brain and the Encyclopedic Palace critique the formal art world's carefully controlled system of inclusions and exclusions exemplified by the current biennial model that dictates who, what, and how artists and objects should be presented. In all three cases, Wilson, Christov-Bakargiev, and Gioni deploy wunderkammer tactics to expand the political potential of exhibitions, by re-imagining their formats and increasing viewer engagement.

As this dissertation argues, in contrast to more didactic curatorial approaches, the use of wunderkammer aesthetics and tactics can enact a different form of politics by presenting alternative approaches to form and content. The wunderkammer's dense form and generative mode of display---abrupt juxtapositions and heterogeneous constellations---can increase the range of ideas explored in an exhibition by provoking unanticipated connections and associations. Similarly, the wunderkammer's singular approach to content---inclusion of objects representing different disciplines, fields of study, practices, and time periods made by art and non-art professionals---can greatly expand the configurations of knowledge within the contemporary art museum. As evidenced by this study, this flexible structure has the potential to liberate exhibitions from their conventional formats and viewers from their conditioned responses so that new approaches to politics can be forged.