A weird world of wonder

“The Museum of Unnatural History,” on display at the Workshop Gallery, is a weird and wild world of ancient-looking delights. It is a forgotten natural history museum where science and folklore intertwine. “The show feels like you were walking into an abandoned exhibit. It’s 90 percent natural history museum and 10 percent curiosity cabinet oddities,” says artist and organizer Liz Ragone. 

Peering around, you’ll see all kinds of works that relate to specimens, but with a twist. Amid the moths and beetles, flora and fungi, are peculiar specimens, strange discoveries, and things that may not exist at all. The enormous skeletal spine mounted on the wall turns out to be a series of stacked, bone-colored ceramic mugs by Victoria Wolf. Nearby, Lily Tilton’s oversize felt “plant” buds a woolly white lamb precariously sitting on top of a long stem. Charlie Giordano’s neon blue butterfly is encased in a bizarre specimen “display case” constructed from patinaed heavy-gauge welded steel, antique instruments, and vacuum tubes, among other assorted electrical elements. Hannah Moore’s ink-and-watercolor painting, “Homage to a Fallen Bluejay,” with its elegant, Victorian-looking funereal design surrounding the dead bird, is at once breathtakingly beautiful and melancholy.

The delicate silver, outstretched insect wings in Elysha Joy’s necklace echo Ragone’s many stained-glass pieces throughout the show. Natural and manufactured light shine through her works, which feature gloriously hued moths and other winged curiosities, including a large piece Ragone is auctioning off, with half the proceeds donated to Planned Parenthood.

When organizing the exhibition, Ragone reached out to artists, inviting them to contribute work that blurs the line between specimen and artifact, preservation and imagination. She drew inspiration from Victorian entomology collections, antique apothecaries, curiosity cabinets, and early museums of natural science.

In her call to artists, Ragone wrote, “Antique cabinets, weathered display cases, moss-covered logs, handwritten labels, and botanical elements will create the illusion of an eccentric museum. We invite artists whose work complements this atmosphere of curiosity, beauty, and quiet mystery. Ceramic vessels that appear unearthed from forgotten collections, jewelry inspired by flora and fauna, botanical illustrations, paintings, sculpture, taxidermy-inspired works (real or imagined), printmaking, mixed-media, and other handcrafted objects are encouraged.”

The community responded, and 24 artists contributed pieces, creating a space that teems with imagination. Ragone says, “The installation feels like discovering an abandoned museum whose curator disappeared decades ago — its collections left intact, inviting visitors to peer closely at each object and wonder whether it belongs to science, art, or myth.”

Ultimately, this gloriously unbelievable world will leave us with a sense of wonder — and joy. “There’s a lot of negativity in the world right now,” says Ragone. “I thought the exhibit would be a fun way to immerse yourself in a world that takes you away from all that.”

“The Museum of Unnatural History” is on view at the Workshop Gallery, 32 Beach Road in Vineyard Haven, through Nov. 29.