Instructions for Collectors

First, a confession.

I sometimes stay in the museum after hours. Sometimes I sleep there. You would think a museum would be quiet at night, but no. The objects talk to me. I have secret nooks where I listen. They tell me their stories while I make notes, scribbling in the dim light. Recording as much as I can. After all, as a curator, it is my job to listen and make connections.

Towards dawn, I often sneak home for a quick shower and a bowl of oatmeal. When I arrive back at the museum, crisp and clean and inspired, no one is any the wiser. I lay open my notes on my desk and survey the night’s work. Few things are more pleasing than writing by hand in a notebook.

If I’ve learned one thing from the objects, it is this: the secret to life is loving what you do. Not in certain hours of certain days, but in every moment of every day. I have decided to love.

It was not always this way. Although I grew up in a family of collectors, there was a period of time when I stopped collecting. To be more accurate: I never stopped collecting completely, but I stopped believing in my collections. During that time, I felt adrift in the sea of the world, subject to random winds and tides and cut off from mystery and beauty, while happiness skirted my periphery. This continued for some time, until I finally realized that I had to take control of my own boat and come home to myself. So I chose a different course and resumed my observing, collecting, and documenting practice. I immediately regained a sense of purpose. Knowing what I now know, I will never lose my way in this manner again. You can’t abandon yourself and expect to like your life.

And so, a short set of instructions.

1. Never allow someone else’s no to annihilate your yes.

2. Always listen to and follow the thread of what attracts you, what ignites your curiosity. For example, the enchantment of drawers, the nesting of artifacts inside boxes, the joy of the secret wardrobe, the home inside the home inside the home—such delicious pleasures. Your yes is your guiding light.

3. Collect handmade images and objects. The value of the unique over the reproduction is inherent. Read Walter Benjamin—one of the great collectors—on this topic. The antique plate is always fully itself.

4. Your collection tells a story. In this collection, you can be anyone you want to be. You can create the story that matches who you are inside. You can change, you can transform, you can start again and again and again. This is the privilege of the collector.

5. Collecting equals learning. On many levels.

6. The object is a repository for magical thought. Objects contain stories. You have a relationship with the object. The object offers you its secrets. By association, you become magical.

7. Be ready to let everything go. The collection is meant to be shared. It starts its life with you and then you hand it over to other minds, other imaginations. In this way, the object becomes expansive and takes on a life of its own, carrying your contribution with it. Evolution is effortless and effervescent and never-ending. Always the forward momentum.