Back in 1952, when Harold Rosenberg wanted to dish spurious examples of Action painting, he called them “apocalyptic wallpaper.” But a number of nineteenth-century writers saw something more than just decorative in the domestic patterns covering Victorian interiors. Apparently so do some artists, whose maddening, unsettling, repetitive designs paper the walls of the Wexner this summer. Curated by the Wexner’s Donna De Salvo and Annetta Massie, “Apocalyptic Wallpaper” features Robert Gober’s spatially disorienting Forest covering, Virgil Marti’s fluorescent Bullies prints, patterns of derriere imprints in Abigail Lane’s Untitled (Bottom Wallpaper), and—lest we forget who first saw wallpaper as a handy canvas some three decades back—Andy Warhol’s Cow. May 10-Aug. 10

— Ernest Pascucci

Borrowing from Ohio State’s vast and varied university collections, Mark Dion gathers images, objects, books, and specimens to concoct a postmodern “curiosity cabinet.” His installation, curated by the Wexner’s Bill Horrigan, incorporates premodern classification systems within the categories “nature,” “humanity,” and “culture” to create a commentary on the organization of knowledge and that particularly modern institution, the museum, for which the curiosity cabinet is a precursor. Among the hundreds of wonders in Dion’s displays are stuffed birds, rare stones, James Thurber drawings, petrified wood, a miniature printing press, a Sumer tablet, Twyla Tharp’s shoes, tintypes, and human skulls. May 10-Aug. 10

— Mary Anne Staniszewski