Viktor Wynd

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Viktor Wynd is a British artist, author, and curator, known for his collections of curiosities.

Artwork[edit]

Wynd established The Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities, Fine Art & Natural History in London's East End, a cabinet of curiosities featuring two-headed lambs, Fiji mermaids, unicorns, taxidermy, dodo bones, erotica, old master etchings, surrealist, occult and outsider art,^[1] and celebrity faeces.^[2] The museum was featured in a BBC Four documentary on cabinets of curiosity.^{[3][non-primary source needed]}

He previously ran a curiosity shop, Viktor Wynd's Little Shop of Horrors, dealing in taxidermy, shrunken heads and other oddities,^[4] including the erect mummified penis of a hanged man.^[5] In 2010 it was reported that Jonathan Ross's wife Jane Goldman had bought the skeleton of a two-headed baby from the shop.^[6]

He has curated around 50 exhibitions at his gallery, Viktor Wynd Fine Art, including exhibitions on Mervyn Peake,^[7] Tessa Farmer,^[8] Leonora Carrington,^[9] and Stephen Tennant.^[10]

In 2005, Wynd had an exhibition entitled "Structures of The Sublime: Towards a Greater Understanding of Chaos" at Ingalls & Associates in Miami, featuring drawings and video.^{[11][non-primary source needed]}

In 2007 he had another exhibition in Miami entitled "The Sorrows of Young Wynd" (in reference to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe) based around a waxwork figure of himself hanging by a noose from the middle of the gallery, and many other images of him committing suicide.^{[12][non-primary source needed]}

He founded The Last Tuesday Society with David Piper in 2003,^{[citation needed]} which became known in London for its halloween parties and masked balls,^[13] often with literary themes.^[14] He also organised Wyndstock, a festival held at Houghton Hall in Norfolk,^[15] and runs a long-running literary salon in London.^[16]

Other work[edit]

Wynd is the author of two books: Structures of The Sublime: Towards a Greater Understanding of Chaos, a fragmentary, modernist anti-novel published in 2005 in Miami, and Viktor Wynd's Cabinet of Wonders, published by Prestel/Random House in 2014.^{[17][non-primary source needed]}

Wynd wrote an essay about his friend Sebastian Horsley for Yale University Press's book Artist/Rebel/Dandy: Men of Fashion, compiled by Kate Irvin and Laurie Anne Brewer.^{[citation needed]}

He has made several TV appearances, including the National Geographic documentary series Taboo.^{[citation needed]} He has also lectured about cabinets of curiosities, his book and his museum at The Lost Lectures,^[18] the British Library,^[19] Manchester University,^[20] 5x15,^[21] and the Barbican.^[22]

He is a committee member of the London Institute of 'Pataphysics.^[23]

References[edit]