Purcell treats old objects with a sense of wonder. Her aesthetic has sometimes been described as pre-Enlightenment. Yet the work is far more contemporary than it first appears. The obsessive focus on selecting, classifying, and repurposing—the culling of favorites from other peoples' favorites—makes it like some ultracool group projects on the Web.

Take a site like del.icio.us, where users tag Web sites to build a cataloging system that others can work from and add to. Or take MySpace, where users juxtapose the work of other people with their own, creating a virtual place in which fragments are assembled and shared. It's not that different from a wonder cabinet, is it? And, of course, there's YouTube, where the processes of creating, selecting, sorting, transposing, and discussing video clips have taken on a life of their own.

Purcell's work isn't speedy, and it doesn't get e-mailed around the world (not yet, anyway). But she also wrestles with how to structure and restructure image and information in the face of overwhelming abundance. Her bats and beetles are nudging up against the future.