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