Salon Hang vs Wunderkammer
サロン掛け / 驚異の部屋
Both sit in Exhibition Design, so the question is not what they belong to but how they behave. One is layout and the other style. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Salon Hang
The Paris Salon's way of stacking paintings frame to frame from floor to ceiling. Height announced a work's rank, and looking became competition and society. It is the exact opposite of the white cube, and its origin.
Wunderkammer
The early modern collection room heaped natural and man-made things, specimens and art, into one space without distinction. Its floor-to-ceiling density aimed at a model of the world, making it the ancestor of the museum and the origin of an aesthetics of collecting.
| Salon Hang | Wunderkammer | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1667–19th century | 16th–18th century |
| Family | Exhibition Design | Exhibition Design |
| Kind | Layout | Style |
| Cues | Stacked floor to ceiling / Crowded frames / Rank by position / The whole wall used | Accumulation to the ceiling / Nature and artifice mixed / Wonder before classification / A collector's universe |
| Best used for | Making the sheer number of works in a collection the attraction · Composing a wall of many small frames in a home or shop as one field | Showing collections from unlike fields as one chain of surprises · Overwhelming a small room or shop through sheer density |
| Type | Keep titles off the wall, using numbers and an entrance key plan | Handwritten slips numbered only, with explanation moved to a separate booklet |
| Composition | Principal works at viewing height, tilted and packed tighter as they rise | Fill walls to the ceiling and put the strangest thing at eye height |
| Material | Gold frames on a deep colored wall, rank carried by frame width | Dark wood shelving, glass jars, specimen boxes, points of light in darkness |
| Caution | Failing to check the upper works from the angle a visitor looks up produces a wall where reflection and foreshortening hide everything. | Copying only the density while losing each object's provenance makes the room look like antique stock, and wonder sinks into decoration. |