Article Notes II

NY Times: Object Lessons: The New Museum Explores Why We Keep Things - William L. Hamilton

"What, then, to make of objects? In a culture being redefined by the way it consumes, what to make of people who collect things, who keep things?

What to make of the personal archives, the private universes, the physical stabs at permanence and immortality that collectors create?"

"What it means to "keep", the relationship of possession to loss, the madness inherent in love, and the undeniable importance of the individual's voice in recording and interpreting history and its sweep"

"It's not the economic value that makes the value of the object, notions of values are more complicated than keeping score at auction"

"Every piece is a masterwork in its right"

"Why do we keep? Beyond preservation - insuring the safety of a thing - keeping can be an act of self-preservation"

NY Times: 'The Keeper' Reveals the Passion for Collecting - Holland Cotter

"This human drive to have more and more"

"Collecting can, of course, be practical: Libraries and museums are valuable utilities. Ego, personal and political, is a familiar motivator: I own much, therefore I am much"

"The real point of collecting, though, may lie beyond practicality, or desire, or accident. People surround themselves with things to compensate for perceived deprivation past, as a hedge against fear or future want"

"Artists with sociological interests also produced voluminous archives of visual data" "Ukraine-born photographer Zofia Rydet set out to document every house in poland....shooting the interiors of 20,000 rural homes"

"Most, however poor, were packed to the roof with things, their walls plastered with images of pop starts and Christian saints"

"As an object, single or multiplied, it serves the basic function that collecting - call it hoarding, call it installation art - does. It lets us keep the illusion that we can forever embrace, and be embraced by, what is forever fading away"