Tiny treasures

Credit: Will Kirk / Johns Hopkins University

Railroad magnate and original university trustee John Work Garrett picked up these miniature Japanese masks, called netsuke, during his second trip to Japan as a member of Johns Hopkins Hospital's medical commission. They're now in Evergreen Museum's permanent collection, and New York artist Mark Dion included the masks as one of many cultural and scientific curiosities in his installation for the Brody Learning Commons. Titled An Archaeology of Knowledge, it is a visual bricolage of the university's intellectual diversity.