Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation

On display through 15 December 2016 in the Cabinet of curiosities in the Hunt Institute lobby is a copy of Matthias de L'Obel's Plantarum seu Stirpium Icones (Antwerp, Christophe Plantin, 1581) with what appears to be some modern coloring. Stop by the Institute during our normal business hours to see this book, which a previous owner essentially used as an adult coloring book.

The cabinet of curiosities, also known as kunstkammer (art room) or wunderkammer (wonder room), emerged in the 16th century to describe a room devoted to objects of antiquity, archaeology, art, ethnography, geology, natural history and religion. In the 20th century Rachel Hunt (1882–1963) amassed a collection of botanical materials spanning the history of botany, which went on to form the core of the Hunt Institute's collections. We have greatly expanded it over the years, many items having come from the collections of others, like Rachel, who created their own cabinets of curiosities to understand the wonders of the world. From time to time we display some of those curiosities to share the wonders of the Institute's collections.