Curated by Brian Dillon

“Curiosity” is a sobriquet that suggests the recondite and faintly déclassé: qualities, no doubt, that recommend it to the arcana-loving, culturally omnivorous New York–based magazine Cabinet and to its UK editor Brian Dillon, who’s curated this bursting Wunderkammer of an exhibition. Spanning contemporary art, anatomy, criminology, Cold War secrets, voyeurism, old-master drawings, and more, “Curiosity” is set to provide a bracingly broad definition of the value—and gratifications—of uncovered knowledge, its centuries-spanning time line hitching past ambitions of grasping a totalized picture of the world to the digital data gluts of today. Alongside contemporary works by Matt Mullican, Tacita Dean, Katie Paterson, and Gerard Byrne, among others, expect Rolodexes from Los Alamos, Dürer woodcuts, Roger Callois’s mineral collection, and—of course!—a stuffed walrus. Travels to Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery, UK, Sept. 28, 2013–Jan. 5, 2014; de Appel Arts Centre, Amsterdam, June–Aug. 2014.

— Martin Herbert