ABSTRACT
Collections are material negotiations of the world. They are acts of imagination reflecting partly objective and partly subjective views of the universe. The imaginative link that unites the objects one to another and to the collector engages both the person and the wider circumstances to which this person belongs or through which they have been shaped. Significance always lies in the perceived relationship between objects; this is a rather complex relationship that reflects the objects (their meanings, histories and so on) as well as the collector’s understanding and interpretation of them and a surrounding imaginative consensus (Pearce 1992, 1995; Belk and Wallendorf 1994; van der Grijp 2006; Potvin and Myzelev 2009). Collecting is an ‘embodied and performative praxis’ (Potvin and Myzelev 2009: 9). Objects share the space, both physical and social, of their subjects and participate in the construction of both space and time for their collectors. They are means of negotiating public perceptions of the world and the individual within it, but also of private interpretations of such perceptions. By amassing groups of objects and presenting them to others, collectors create the opportunity to disseminate their understanding of their artefacts, but also of themselves, of their beliefs and interests. They create personal histories in what is, above all, a museum of and for themselves. Possessions thus function as an extension and a conscious act of construction of the collector’s subjectivity.
