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The Marvelous Museum: A Project by Mark Dion

September 11, 2010 – March 6, 2011

An unprecedented expedition through the Museum’s art, history, and natural science collections, conceptual artist Mark Dion presents a multiple site-specific installations and interventions throughout the art galleries, drawing upon the overlooked orphans, curiosities, and treasures from the collections. Many of these objects date back to OMCA’s predecessor institutions (a baby elephant, a sled used in a nineteenth century Arctic expedition, an elaborately decorated hornbill skull, a snuff bottle collection, and much more) and, while they often lie outside of OMCA’s California focus, still tell a rich and captivating story of how museum collections are assembled over time.

OMCA Senior Curator of Art René de Guzman curates this first major West Coast presentation of Dion’s work, which is accompanied by a publication by Chronicle Books in partnership with The Believer magazine. The book itself, like many of Dion’s artworks, is a compendium of oddities and discoveries.

The Marvelous Museum: A Project by Mark Dion is made possible in part by generous support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the FOR-SITE Foundation, the LEF Foundation, Sheila Duignan and Michael Wilkins, and the OMCA Art Guild.

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