Passive Aggressive Potential of Art Collections Explained

Introduction: Collections as More Than Passive Objects

Collections, at first glance, seem to be the epitome of passiveness. They quite literally sit there — sometimes collecting dust bunnies of their own — waiting for the crucial observer to stop by and value them. The idea of collections, however, and the rules that govern their creation and the discourse that may or may not arise when they are observed, are anything but passive. In "On Collecting Art and Culture," James Clifford contends that collections are themselves artifacts of the society that did the collecting and the time period in which they were collected. As such, they are loaded with value not only from their constituent parts but also from the very act of their creation. For Clifford, collections carry meanings from both the past and the present. What Clifford does not do, however, is extend the value of collections into the future.

Clifford's Art-Culture System and the Chronotope of Collections

Clifford begins his discourse by referencing a poem by James Fenton, "The Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford." The poem traces a child's experience in a museum and touches on a mystical and dangerous possibility offered by the collection. While the museum offers intellectual stimulation and satisfaction for morbid curiosity, it also provides entrance into "the kingdom of your promises / To yourself" (qtd. in Clifford 51), a place both Fenton and Clifford warn against entering. Clifford reads the subtle power of collections as a call to a sort of Jungian consciousness — a "path of too-intimate fantasy…a forbidden area of the self" (51).

While Fenton's poem seems to describe an intensely individual experience, Clifford escalates this consciousness into an examination of collections as a revelation of what he calls "cultural 'selves'" (Ibid.). His essay unfolds as a discourse on the metahistory of collecting. After tracing — and even mapping — the rational matrix by which societal products are collected and classified in his "art-culture system," Clifford extends that rational categorization to collections themselves. Where individual artifacts are collected and valued according to their worth as artistic creations, their symbolic power as cultural representations, or their rarity as specimens of their kind, collections are valued as snapshots in time. Therefore, he argues, we must "resist the tendency of collections to be self-sufficient, to suppress their own historical, economic, and political processes of production" (59).

For Clifford, collections must not "suppress" the circumstances of their production because doing so hides their value as episodes along a chronotope — specimens of the time and place of their creation, carrying all the cultural residue of that moment. For some, however, collections possess a value far beyond their existence as specimens.

Hill's Engaged Vision: Collections as Cultural Producers

Richard William Hill explores the active potential of collections as artifacts in his essay "Getting Unpinned: Collecting Aboriginal Art and the Potential for Hybrid Public Discourse in Art Museums." Hill speaks from his experience as a curatorial assistant at the public Art Gallery of Ontario, and unlike Clifford, he takes a personally engaged view of collecting. He begins his exploration of the role of collections in public museums by recounting a childhood experience of bug collecting. When asked to select a bug for pinning, he found that he "had trouble getting [his] head around the idea that you would kill something simply so you could have it around to look at" (Hill 195). This moment constitutes for Hill a moral imperative that extends to all collecting: one must consider the impact of the act of collecting upon that which is collected.

He finds an especially poignant example of this in the collection of American Aboriginal art. While the collection of art and artifacts from these cultures is important, it is not nearly as important for Hill as the discourse that can be brought about in society as a result of these collections. The most valuable attribute of a collection, and the most valuable service of a museum, is the ability to "cause productive trouble" in the form of human conversation and reflection (195). In the case of Aboriginal art, a collection should — if offered sensitively and intelligently — instigate public discourse on the inequities between the honor and respect heaped upon the artifacts of Aboriginal cultures and the neglect and disrespect directed at those cultures themselves.

Conclusion: Entering the Forbidden Woods

Perhaps Hill would read Fenton's poem differently than Clifford does. Perhaps Hill would invite us to enter that "forbidden woods" (Clifford 51) of intimate personal engagement with collections, breaking through the "taboo" and opening up not only new ways of seeing ourselves but also new ways of engaging with each other.

References

Clifford, James. "On Collecting Art and Culture." In The Cultural Studies Reader, Simon During, ed. New York: Routledge, 1993. 49–73.

Hill, Richard William. "Getting Unpinned: Collecting Aboriginal Art and the Potential for Hybrid Public Discourse in Art Museums." In Obsession, Compulsion, Collection, Anthony Kiendl, ed. Banff: Banff Centre Press, 2004. 193–206.