Collecting: private pleasure, public virtue

on what account collect? It is a question that it is rarely pos at the same time in London this month there is more reason that usual to ask it. For the art market, June is London's month when the world companys to buy at no fewer than six major international fairs, when the auction houses present the most tempting treasures they can assemble, and when the city's dealers have collaborated upon an ambitious new venture, Art Fortnight London, designed to proclaim that their stores and galleries can compete in excitement with any of the fairs or salerooms. a certain quantity of of the buyers at these circumstances may be attracted by the cogitation of making an investment, on the contrary no real collector thinks single in those terms. True collecting is not calculating; it is a character trait.

Although the history of collecting is a make submissive that has become a scholarly discipline in its have right--it supports an excellent academic journal--the psychology of the collector is not usually musing to merit much attention. That may be because it is believed to be centr upon acquisitiveness, neither a very mingled nor a particularly attractive characteristic. The image of the collector all too easily shades into that of the hoarder or miser, enhanced through the fact that--despite a not many outstanding exceptions, such as Lady Charlotte Schreiber--most of the world's celebrated collectors have been men There are serviceable social and economic reasons for that, of course, on the contrary a passion for collecting is usually assumed to be primarily a male characteristic.

However, the fact is more likely to be that a great number of women assemble and often form very significant collections, on the other hand men more often make it a central or distinctive feature of their lives. It is notable that in Martin Bailey's list upon pp. 60-65 of the twenty-five major collectors in Britain today, single three are women, two of whom (Dame Vivien Duffield and Janet Wolfson de Botton) are the daughters of major collectors and the third (Lisa Sainsbury) has married into a collecting dynasty. Collecting many times runs in families--think of the Rothschilds--suggesting that it is an inheritable trait.

There may therefore not be plenteous difference, psychologically speaking, between collecting beer-mats and collecting oriental porcelain. However, an art collection is more likely to be started by the agency of accident. We all buy realitys we find aesthetically pleasing to furnish our houses, and sometimes as a proceed become collectors without realising it. upon which side of the line--collection or just well-stuffed rooms--do your possessions fall? As Mr Bailey intimates in his article, one reason on what account there seem to be fewer collectors now than there were in the past is because clan wealthy enough to collect art seriously repeatedly have smaller homes than they would one time have done, and contemporary tastes for informal or sparely furnished ranges make it hard to accommodate an accumulation of art.

If collecting is a psychological trait, it is unlikely that it has diminished in the twenty-first hundred It is the nature of collecting that has altered. If nation do ask themselves why they muster they are very much les likely to say 'for their children'. Who can be confident that their heirs will have the same tastes, give leave to alone want to be saddled with the expense--insurance, security, conservation--of looking after valuable works of art, which are demanding realitys to possess, and hamper their owner's freedom? It is partly that unwillingness to build up collections for inheritance that explains wherefore works of art are bought and sold with plenteous more freedom than they were in the past.

The beneficiaries of this have been public art collections. clan now establish their place in history not by the agency of bequeathing their collections to their heirs, on the contrary by giving them away. The greatest in quantity important lesson of Mr Bailey's analysis of novel British collecting is that the major collectors are also the major philanthropists of art. This makes clear the connection between the essentially rather solitary practice of collecting and the public realm. It is a task that has been well learned in the USA, which lacks a tradition of inherited collections upon the aristocratic model and has make knowned a lively culture of art philanthropy. It is les well understood in Britain, where the emphasis of public debate is usually upon the preservation of the great privately be in possession ofed country-house collections.

As Mr Bailey eyes there has been silence from the Treasury about the challenging recommendation of the Goodison Report, published earlier this year, that it should be possible to give works of art to public collections in lieu of tax in the lifetime of the donor. This would immeasurably benefit Britain's museums and galleries. It would also give new reason for the country's hold collectors to spend seriously at the fairs, auctions and exhibitions which this month proclaim London the capital of the art world.

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