Established in 2007 by Marc Fischer, and featured in the 2014 Whitney Biennial, Public Collectors encourages collectors of material culture--the kind that most museums won't exhibit--to 'open' their collections to the public. Extending the popular website of the same name, this book presents a wide array of collections--some featured on the website, most newly assembled for publication--interspersed with commentary and essays exploring the problems and politics of collecting materials that may lack conventional monetary or cultural value.
This publication is devoted to private collectors and their relationships with and gifts to public institutions in the United States. Thirteen authors bring to life the long tradition of private collecting and public philanthropy in America and reveal new insights into the formation of many of its major art institutions. Public-spirited collectors such as Henry Clay Frick, Andrew Mellon, and Solomon and Irene Guggenheim fulfilled their desires by establishing The Frick Collection, the National Gallery of Art, and the Guggenheim Museum, respectively. John G. Johnson?s collection was first left to Philadelphia as a standalone museum, and later fell under the stewardship of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Eleanor and Edsel Ford were instrumental supporters and contributors to the Detroit Institute of Arts. Samuel Putnam Avery was a civic-minded art dealer, adviser, and collector whose porcelain collection helped shape the Department of Asian Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Some collectors, including Catharine Lorillard Wolfe, Michael Friedsam, Adelaide de Groot, and Martin A. Ryerson, made significant gifts to pre-existing museums such as The Met and the Art Institute of Chicago. Finally, Robert Gilmor, Jr., and arguably Mary Jane Morgan, had aspirations of building public collections, yet they were not successful for various reasons. ?What?s Mine is Yours? celebrates Inge Reist, founding Director and now Director Emerita of the Center for the History of Collecting at the Frick Art Reference Library.
The Private Collector’s Museum connects the rising popularity of private museums with evolving models of collecting and philanthropy, and new inter-relationships between private and public space. It examines how contemporary collectors construct museums to frame themselves as cultural arbiters of global distinction. By exploring a range of in-depth contemporary case studies, the book aims for a more complex understanding of the private collector’s museum, assessing how it is realised, funded and understood in a broader cultural context. It examines the ways in which this particular museum model has evolved within a historical Western tradition of collecting and museum-building, and considers how private museums will endure alongside their public counterparts. It also sheds light on the shifting patterns of collecting, such as the transition of personal art collections into the public sphere. The developments are situated within the wider context of private–public engagement in general. Providing a new analysis of philanthropy, public access and the museum, The Private Collector’s Museum is essential reading for scholars and students interested in the private museum, and key reading for those interested in related issues.
The at-a-glance layout of this guide allows collectors to plan their next trip to the United States or Europe around their collecting passion, providing them with the necessary information to find collections on, or related to their enthusiasm.
Today, government archivists and manuscript collectors are often in conflict over government-created documents that come up for sale out of private hands. Such manuscripts are often archival material that escaped government control, and government archivists want that missing material back to complete the historic record. Collectors and dealers, however, assert that since the government didn’t take care of their documents properly at the time of their creation, they lost the right to claim them now. This divide between government archivists and collectors has become especially acute for “trophy” documents written by a person of note or about a well-known person or event. Archivists, Collectors, Dealers, and Replevin does not serve as a legal guide to the issues that arise in this divide; instead, it presents both sides of the conflict and examines them dispassionately. The book begins with an historical review of institutional and state-sponsored collecting and the care of historical documents in the United States. The review is followed by a selection of tales of theft and neglect in the past. The third chapter examines the origins and maturation of the archival profession in the United States, and the next discusses the phenomenon of collecting, both as a hobby and as an institutional activity. The fifth chapter provides a general summary of state and federal statutes on public documents in private hands, and with that background in place, the sixth chapter distills the perspectives of the various parties in the struggle. The seventh presents a series of case studies developed to evoke the complexity of these conflicts. The book concludes with steps that holders of public documents can take to avoid conflicts, as well as steps an archive can take to protect its collection.
