Hoarders or Collectors? Americans Have Forgotten the Difference

THE GUARDIAN
By Jonathon Jones
Partners (The Teddy Bear Project) by Ydessa Hendeles at The Keeper exhibition at The New Museum. Photograph: Photograph by Robert Keziere
The US is a nation of compulsive collectors – at least if responses to an exhibition at New York City’s New Museum are anything to go by. "The Keeper" is a collection of collections, a survey of the collecting passion in art and beyond that finds room for everything from a menagerie of tiny whittled animals made by Levi Fisher Ames of Wisconsin to Vladimir Nabokov’s collection of butterflies in three floors of stuff. All of which begs the question: what is the difference between artful collecting and mad hoarding? Or are they the same thing? The psychology of the collector seems more traumatised, anxious and defensive. [link]