100A NATURAL HISTORY PANOPTICONpractices of participation and delegation. Focusing on the aim of gener-
ating ecological awareness, the artist diffracts his authorial authority,
enlisting groups of volunteers entrusted with managing collection pro-
cesses as well as curating the display stages of the projects. This operation
is particularly important because, on the performative level, it derails the
single authorial role played by the kingly owner of the cabinets of curi-
osities, a role that was eventually replaced by the individual authorial role
of the early natural scientist of the Enlightenment. Dion’s approach thus
merges both roles into a plurality of disciplinary and nondisciplinary
voices of amateurs and experts in an attempt to undermine the limita-
tions of ideologically charged institutional approaches.
Theatrum Mundi: Armarium is one of Dion’s most interesting cabinets
of curiosities and has largely contributed to the renewed interest in the
subject within contemporary art (fig. 2.8). The piece comprises three
cabinets housing objects entrusted with the representational duty of
materializing the ladders of beings (scala naturae) devised by the post-
FIGURE 2.8 Mark Dion and Robert Williams, Theatrum mundi: Armanium, 2001.
Wooden cabinet, mixed media. 110 2/3 × 110 3/7 × 24 4/5 in. (281 × 280.5 × 63 cm). In-
stallation view, The Macabre Treasury, Museum Het Domein, Netherlands, January
20 to April 29, 2013. Courtesy of the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York.