Through the lens of the glass cabinet: entering the material realm of museum objects

This article discusses questions of spatial configuration and display design in museums, and how this affects the way museum objects are perceived. Based on an in-depth analysis of the Glass Cabinet at Rosenborg Castle in Copenhagen, Denmark, the article explores how the glass items on display are seen not as singular objects, with a curated (hi)story to tell, but more as a collected mass of disparate glass objects with a material reality of their own. When looking at these objects, the spectator is placed within a large glass enclosure which protects the objects on display from the curious hands of museum visitors. However, this glass ‘vitrine’ also has the effect of putting the museum visitor on display, thereby challenging conventional subject-object relations within museums. In order to discuss the particular subversive ways in which the Glass Cabinet presents its objects, the article will partly draw on museological research on object collections and museum display, and partly on current thinking within the fields of object-oriented ontology and new materialism, where a de-centering of humans is proposed and the material realm of objects is emphasized. By speculating about the obscure life of objects within the Glass Cabinet, and the effects this might have upon the visual operations at play, this article will reflect on – and challenge – the ways in which we display and look at objects within museums today.