Choosing, excluding, arranging, making connections. Deciding what to keep and what to let go. But what does it really mean to collect? When does a series of things stop being an accumulation and become a collection?
Around these questions, Ilaria Bollati and Marta Spanevello brought together 37 contributors – collectors, artists, designers, art historians, architects, anthropologists, economists, curators, psychologists, and scholars – and, drawing on their responses, constructed six imaginary conversations: dialogues that never took place, bringing together different perspectives, experiences, and languages.
Among them are Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Massimo Valsecchi, Tomás Saraceno, Formafantasma, Cino Zucchi, Laura Mattioli, Haidy Geismar, Guido Guerzoni, Bartolomeo Pietromarchi, and Marie-Prune Baudin. From the desire to possess to care and preservation, from the private dimension of collecting to its entry into public space, the book explores collecting as a lens through which to read the present and our relationship with things.
The volume is completed by illustrations by Jean Blanchaert.