ways of seeing

The centerpiece of the Getty exhibit is the Cabinet of Wonder—what cocurator Barbara Maria Stafford calls "furniture to think with." Fashioned of ebony, chestnut, semiprecious stones, marble, and tortoiseshell, the rare 17th-century German display cabinet was built to house hundreds of specimens, with a special drawer or tray for each marvel. During an era of expanding exploration and trade, European travelers returned from trips to distant shores with trunkloads of exotica, natural and man-made. Enshrined like relics in rich cabinetry, these treasured finds—an Indonesian spiked helmet, perhaps, or a piece of brain coral—became emblems of family wealth, power, and knowledge. Sorting through these mementos was an evening's entertainment, a way to contemplate natural history in the comfort of the drawing room

"A mind is a terrible thing to waste" in the ad campaign against drugs, a television advertisement is used to portray frying an egg in a frying pan. This is the concept th...