To Collect or Not To Collect, by Joyce Szabo

When: Mon, Sep 18 2006 7:00pm

Where: Los Equipales Restaurant

To Collect or Not To Collect, or What Our Collections Say about Us

Joyce Szabo, Dept. of Art and Art History

• Most of us collect something; some of us collect a great many different and seemingly unrelated things.
• What makes us select the objects to collect that we do?
• What do those selections say about us?

From a brief general discussion of collections, I will examine the motivations behind nineteenth-century collections of Native American and First Nations works made specifically for sale and what those pieces say about both their creators and their purchasers. As is the case with many works, these objects went out of fashion, sometimes found their way into attics or yard sales; some even ended up in the trash. As is often the case, tastes have changed, bringing many of these previously undesirable pieces back into favor. How do contemporary collectors of the same objects differ from their nineteenth century predecessors? The variability of "value," what that means and how it affects collections, is at the root of the stories examined here.