On Collecting: An Interview with a Private Collector

Assembling and caring for collections is a key area being explored by the Profusion theme. In this dispatch we share a short video clip made by Jennie Morgan, Profusion theme researcher, based on an interview and a guided house-tour with a private collector of road signs, bicycles, toy trains, glassware, and books (amongst other kinds of things). The clip uses audio, photographs, and filmed footage to focus on his motivations for collecting, his approach to acquiring and organising these things, and ultimately what the collector thinks will become of his collections in the future. Key themes are revealed including: the notion of endangerment as guiding collecting; how he decides what and what not to collect (for example, ‘genre’ or ‘definitive’ collecting, or acquiring something for its ‘use’); the kinds of values informing these judgements (for example, ‘taste’, ‘age’, and ‘rarity’); and the challenge of letting go of things based on knowing when they are no longer needed (‘I have to be convinced that I am not going to need to do anything with the thing before I get rid of it’ the collector tells us). Later we will compare insights from this research activity with those from looking at collecting in museums – especially contemporary collecting. As one of the first video clips made for the Profusion theme, it also illustrates our research and film practice in process.