Collecting Nature: The History of the Herbarium and Natural Specimens offers a collection of collections, a satisfying glimpse into the age-old practice.
Collecting
Why Early Modern European Artists Were Obsessed With Shells
From Leonardo to Rembrandt, artists were drawn to these soft and glowing forms.
An Exhibition of Gordon Parks’s Photography Suggests New Roles for African-American Collectors
An exhibition of Gordon Parks’s photography at Harvard University’s Ethelbert Cooper Gallery highlights the unique role that Kasseem Dean is attempting to carve out as collector of Black art.
University Eliminates Two Scientific Collections to Make Way for Stadium Renovations
Two scientific collections at the University of Louisiana at Monroe (ULM) are being divested to make way for renovations of the campus track stadium.
The Best Way to Collect Contemporary Art: Patiently and Passionately
When art and commerce mix, a certain level of mania is inevitable: it’s what you get when passion and pragmatism collide.
The Collections Behind Great Artists
“Artists, as we know, are notorious collectors, but you always wonder what came first, the chicken or the egg.”
Victoria & Albert Museum Devotes Gallery to Buzzy Objects
For better or for worse, museums tend to be behind the times, arbitrating culture from some kind of temporal remove. The Victoria and Albert Museum in London is attempting to minimize that gap with a newly announced initiative called Rapid Response Collecting.
French Government Backs Away from Taxing Art as Wealth
A proposal for an amendment that would tax art worth over $65,175 ran into immediate controversy in France from museums and cultural officials. The government is now backing far away from the change in the tax code, which has the potential to discourage donations of art to institutions, the Sun Daily reports.
Collection (Not) as Curation: How Exhibitions are Different From Libraries
Does an understanding of professional collecting, as is done in libraries, give us a better understanding of what’s happening on Tumblr, or at least help us better understand how we define curation? I turned to the founder and organizer of the Reanimation Library, artist and professional librarian Andrew Beccone, for his thoughts.