When asked to say something about “collecting,” the first thought that enters my mind is a negative one: it is not “accumulating.” And a second negative: it is not “investing.” What then, stated positively, is collecting? It is acquiring objects that have some relation to each other and putting those objects into the kind of order that reflects the collector’s response to them. Each true collection achieves a personality beyond and apart from the sum of the objects. This personality is definable and has a value in itself. It is lost if the collection is dispersed or mutilated.[1]
All the above is true, I believe, of collections of baseball cards, beetles and butterflies, stamps and coins, and many other categories of collecting and ordering, but true only peripherally. It is the category of art collecting that concerns me here, and this is the category in which what I call “personality” is most apparent and, somehow, central. I include decorative arts. The fine and the decorative arts are also most vulnerable to the accusation of appearing to be mere accumulations where the ordering function is absent or minimal. This can be noted in private collections as well as museums. True collections are never only an assembly of accidents or lucky finds, although individual pieces or sections may be so characterized.
The true art collector must have some initial instinct and preference for the field chosen. But, while instinct and taste are crucial, so is scholarship. Studying books,
