The Last Tuesday Society

Grotesque, fascinating, macabre, haunting. These adjectives describe the fascination of mankind regarding the natural mysteries of our planet. If you are interested in cabinets of wonder, you cannot afford to miss this blog post about The Last Tuesday Society and The upcoming Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities.

What is the The Last Tuesday Society?

The Last Tuesday Society was founded in 1873 at Harvard by William James & brought to London as a ‘pataphysical’ organisation in autumn 2006 by The Chancellor Viktor Wynd & The Provost David Piper. The society is dedicated to subverting life, the universe and everything bored of the life and world it sees around it seeks to create a new world filled with beauty, wonder and the imagination. The Society presents a veritable feast of experiences and productions.

Who is Viktor Wynd?

As his official website states, ‘Viktor Wynd is a multidisciplinary artist working in the fields of installation and relational aesthetics, often creating and manipulating vast and elaborate subversive social situations involving casts of up to 200 performers and many thousands of participants’.

He read History at London’s School of Oriental & African Studies specialising in the Medieval Islamic Middle East, then took a foundation course in art and design at the John Cass before being awarded the Rosenquist Fellowship in Fine Art and pursuing a M.F.A. at The University of South Florida. After producing three elaborate installations in Miami Galleries, he moved to London where he has worked extensively with social structures. Much of the work is to do with the absurdity, pathos, misery and pointlessness of every day life there was originally a deep quest to understand the world, to see some sort of meaning in the chaos.

Viktor Wynd he has also become an Impresario, Collector, Dealer & Curator. Clients, partners & associates have included, The Victoria and Albert Museum, The Whitechapel, The Hayward Gallery, Hendrick’s Gin, William Grant USA, First Drinks, Bistrotheque, The Café Royal, Hedges & Butler, Port Elliot Literary Festival, Latitude, 43 South Molton, Hedges & Butler, Ingalls & Associates, LondonNewcastle and many others.

In 2013 The National Geographic flew a team to London to follow The Chancellor of The Last Tuesday Society for One Day. The resulting documentary has been seen by over 180 Million People Worldwide: One Day in The Life of Viktor Wynd – ‘Taboo’.

The upcoming Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities

Although in need of a good dusting, the Last Tuesday Society’s Shop of Horrors is curious, horrific and fascinating in equal measure.

Atlas Obscura

The Last Tuesday Society launched it’s Little Shop of Horrors in 2009, hovering halfway between theatre and sculpture, shop and museum, academic institution and art gallery, it was, like its founder, both an installation and a performance. Viktor Wynd’s Little Shop of Horrors became one of the countries leading purveyors of Curiosities and Natural History, however Viktor found selling things increasingly hard and really only got pleasure from buying them. Therefore, The Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities is meant to become a contemporary cabinet of curiosities. This is, ‘a unique Wunderkabinett that will hopes to offer a mirror to a world so suffused with miracles and beauty that any attempt at categorization is bound to fail’.

Areas of the museum:

• Upper Galleries: exhibitions, a coral reef aquarium, a minute gift shop & a tiny macabre baroque cocktail bar & cafe.
• Underground: The Wunderkabinett will host a gesumskunstwerk of Curiosities, Natural History & Fine Art, from old master etchings to tin toys & extinct birds.

Are you interested in becoming a patron of the museum? Then you can pledge to the ongoing Kickstarter campaign. And remember the Fifth Commandment of Singularity: ‘Beauty is not always evident and may be found in unexpected places’.

For further information: www.thelasttuesdaysociety.org