My role as a professional organizer has placed me in intimate contact with individual and collective tendencies towards excess. On a spectrum from busy families and downsizing for aging clients to collecting and hoarding, I’ve seen more than my fair share of accumulated stuff. From this perspective, I continue to ask questions about the human nature of collecting. In this post, I attempt to further my/your/our understanding of collecting in historical contexts, both cultural and personal.
The Psychology of Collecting
As a frame of reference, I’d like to define two terms before continuing. Collecting (as opposed to hoarding) is generally considered a hobby. Hoarding is defined as a mental disorder and involves both excessive acquiring of objects and extreme difficulty parting with objects. These behaviors can lead to objects that overtake an environment and become unsafe. There are definitely class biases and associations around the terms hoarding and collecting. Leave a comment below with your perspective.
As a professional, I do my best to remain objective and non-judgmental about the stuff people collect. I witness firsthand the day-to-day struggles that so many westerners live and work through, and accumulate in myself, including. It’s a hamster wheel of life: grab what you can as you run, because you may not get another chance. I realize the oversimplification in this perspective. Partly, my bias stems from the work I do with many individuals who are decluttering, downsizing, or otherwise trying to manage the excess stuff they’ve accumulated over their lives.
Porcelain figurine of a matador
What we lived with and were taught by our families in our homes as children is for some, the first lesson we learned of collecting. Maybe in your household it was music records or Hummel figurines, or inherited crystal and China, maybe it was coffee mugs or something more Avant guard, like artwork or photographs.
We seem to have no time to manage what our eyes and hands want to digest as we are running through this life! But we do, if we can slow down and reflect on the historical context of collecting and our personal relationship towards the tendency and desire to acquire.
Collecting is a topic I plan to continue investigating in this blog. I’m fascinated and, yes, also horrified by the history in a colonial context. But there are other historical contexts to understand as well.
The Privilege of Collecting
Fairly recently, I listened to a conversation between Dr. Kelli Morgan and Hyperallergic editor Hrag Vartanian that placed collecting within historical context. During this exchange, Dr. Morgan mentioned that the origins of collecting were theft. They were discussing collecting in the context of institutions (museums), but it bears consideration how these institutions came to be. One line that really struck me as getting to the heart of this matter follows.
In Dr. Morgan’s words, in a recent article she wrote for Hyperallergic, “European colonizers amassed a massive number of BIPOC cultural objects, which they subsequently built establishments to house and economic markets to support.”
That is not the framing of history we frequently hear. It’s certainly not the way institutions or the art market are framed by academia or economists, but there is an unmistakable truth to it. These establishments are the museums, galleries, auction houses, estate sale companies and thrift shops that filter out/through the mass of objects collected by humans. Economic markets of these establishments are driven by and towards manipulation of our desire to acquire. Just look at the recent trends of private equity firms in acquiring thrift shops.
Pink Handblown Glass Dale Chihuly Bowl
I realize that this may be uncomfortable and controversial for some readers, but we need to face the dark side of history from time to time and do some personal reckoning.
There are many collectors who are uncomfortable with that label. Could the unsightly history of collecting be at the root of some of this discomfort? Perhaps, and possibly unconsciously, that is the case for some individuals. Having your wealth paraded or lauded is extremely uncomfortable and especially uncouth for some (collectors or not).
It’s long overdue that we accept the nature of privilege in the act of collecting.
The truth is often uncomfortable. Until we reckon with our institutional, collective, and personal relationships to excess, we will remain complicit in thoughtless, frequently harmful accumulation. Accumulation, when it comes with the privilege of space to display and live with these works, is not called hoarding.
Thoughtful Collecting and Minimalism
I do not want to degrade the process of thoughtful collecting as an act of support and desire to be a part of a creative life and community. I am a collector of stuff! Stuff others have made, that I have made, and materials to make more. In a previous post, I wax poetic about the Genesis of Collecting in my own life story.
There are many reasons for collecting, in this post, I have opened the door to further introspection and reflection on this process. There are also many individuals who remain ‘minimalist’ and shun, with monastic scrutiny, the act of living with excess.
The historical context for collecting lives both in our personal lives and in our collective cultures and institutions. I hope that this post will act as an invitation for you to think more about the context of collecting in your life and in our larger culture.
As we face the cresting wave of an aging population in the process (or will be in coming years) of deaccessioning, it’s of upmost importance that we begin to reflect on what, why and how much we accumulate. Far to frequently I hear that the families of the individuals I work with have no interest in the things that were collected by older (Baby-Boomer and Greatest Generations) people.
Assorted collection of books and ceramics
We cannot always pass our passions, interests and stuff onto younger generations. While this may be the case, it is very worthwhile to have conversations and documentation that helps younger generations who may inherit these objects understand them in context.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic in the comments. What is your understanding of your personal and a collective historical context for collecting?