Hi Laurie,

 

Thanks for asking. No scholarly or academic information that I know of, about a deep rooted or even biologically based inclination to collect, but there certainly could be…I haven’t looked other than incidentally. 

 

My hypothesis is, I think, born of doing some archeology a long time ago and finding things like beautiful stones or pebbles, very unusually shaped stones and the like, that bore no evidence of deliberate shaping, and were not a material being used for tool making but because of the nature of the surrounding geography or geology could not have gotten there by any other means than having been brought in by human hands.

 

It would be an interesting thing to study, actually, but I suppose it would mean scouring hundreds of archeological site reports, and who knows whether the reporting archeologists would have even mentioned items that were not recognizably artifacts or raw material.  Many of them probably would not unless there were a substantial number found.

 

Any other archeologists out there who want to weigh in?

 

Lucy

 

Is there any academic/scholarly information that supports your thinking, Lucy?  Because I think it’s a very good point.

LAS

 

 

I wasn’t the curator of that exhibit, but it sounds like one I did many years ago, especially the “why people collect” theme.  We had sections on children’s collecting (pretty rocks, marbles, cards, etc.), on illegal collecting (and how to do it with a camera instead), on various collection motivating factors like collecting for beauty, collecting for value, collecting for sentiment, etc.  Each had actual collections, or portions thereof, as examples.  It was a lot of fun, fairly easy to pull together, and visitors enjoyed it because most of them had never thought about these things.

 

My home grown (and perhaps only semi-defendable) belief is that primitive humans had to learn to sort out the world around them, to recognize plants that were safe to eat, etc., and so developed a keen ability to discern minor differences among similar things.  That trait and gathering things to us to keep and use led us to the inclination to collect.

 

Lucy Sperlin

 

 

Oh no, no, no, no, no!  The BEST exhibit I have EVER seen on collecting was an exhibit on the topic of  "Why People Collect".  A fascinating exhibit with several rooms of people's "pet" collections including wedding toppers, unused, labeled tooth brushes, 1970s smiley-face objects, string lights, etc.  The theme was what motivates people to collect and how EVERYONE collects something (if you have 3 or more of an object...you collect it!) .This made it a VERY accessible exhibit that EVERYONE could relate to and have fun with - endless possibilities.  I had lunch with the curator many years later because I was intersted in the topic for my anythropology thesis and can forward you her name, etc.  - it slips my mind right now.


Best,

Laurie

-----Original Message-----
From: David Harvey
<[log in to unmask]>Sent: Nov 21, 2008 10:30 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [MUSEUM-L] Exhibits on Collectors and Collecting

Hi Everyone,

There is a wonderful current exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on - "Hearst The Collector" - displaying many of the objects and art that were collected by William Randolph Hearst - many that have been brought back together for the first time since Hearst owned them.

Here is the web page on it:
http://www.lacma.org/art/ExhibHearst.aspx

Cheers!
Dave

David Harvey
Conservator
Los Angeles, CA
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