Museum van huisdieren 1848 - 1881

This is "Museum van Huisdieren" by Lutkie & Cranenburg, housed here at the Rijksmuseum. The print presents a tableau of domestic animals—cats, goats, dogs, a horse, and more—each rendered with a crude, almost childlike simplicity. What strikes us first is the rigid ordering of the animals into a grid, set against a pale background, with thin yellow lines delineating the ground beneath each animal. This structured arrangement nods to Linnaean taxonomy, reflecting a cultural obsession with categorizing and ordering the natural world. Yet, the rudimentary style undermines any sense of scientific accuracy. The artists seem more interested in the idea of a museum—a space of display and knowledge—than in accurately portraying these creatures. Are the artists commenting on how we try to contain the wildness of nature through systems of classification? How do these simplistic depictions destabilize the viewer's expectations of scientific representation? Consider how the work challenges the notion of a museum as a place of objective truth, becoming instead a playful commentary on our desire to impose order on the natural world.