Wooden cabinets with dovetailed joints, cardboard kits with die-cut inserts, display vitrines, specimen cases, folders, drawers—what if the box is not only a container of knowledge, but one of its primary analytic forms?
Scholars have long argued that classification does more than sort what is known; it helps produce the very objects and criteria of epistemic legibility. Work grounded in this insight often examines grids, lists, and schemas—operative yet abstract forms that bypass the material supports that make such ordering possible.
“Box Things” brings together scholars from the history of science and art, media studies, and architecture to think through the containers that physically hold knowledge in place. Convened after hours at the Yale Peabody Museum, when the galleries’ storage logics become newly visible, the discussion turns to the toolbox, the snow globe, one house made of crates, and a mousetrap.
