Museums and Society
Spring 2010
Second Writing Assignment:
Collecting
Susan Peace writes:
…museum objects are created by the act of collecting, usually twice over—firstly
through the choices of the individual collector, and secondly by the willingness of
a museum to take the collected assemblage for reasons which have to do with its
perceived aesthetic, historic or scientific value.
Consider this statement in light of your readings on collecting. You might want to
consider Joseph Alsop’s “General Laws,” as well as one or more of the following
statements:
Once the object stops being defined by its function, its meaning is entirely up to
the subject.
Baudrillard
The collection presents a hermetic world: to have a representative collection is
to have both the minimum and the complete number of elements necessary for
an autonomous world—a world which is both full and singular, which has
banished repetition and achieved authority.
Stewart
4-5 typed pages
Due 12:00 noon, March 12