Mistakes...You'll Make a Few

So, I am what you call a guest writer...and a nervous one to be honest. This blog thing is gettin big man, and I'm not so good with an audience. What I really came here (metaphorically) to talk about other than my blog fright is the beautiful necessity of mistakes. It can be the process of mistakes that not only make the person, but the collection. Now I'm not talking about George Jr. type mistakes (yikes!), I mean the sort that relate to a collection through the process of buying things that someday you might wish you had not or conversely those that you wish you had.

I recently taught for the first time a class for people wanting to learn more about collecting--hardly the expert I tried to offer some tips I have learned from collecting a little on my own, working at Mixed Greens and with really dedicated collectors like Paige. One of the questions my students were very concerned about was what if they make a mistake? What if they buy something that after a few years they don't love or what if their tastes or themes within their collections change? My answer: fear of this kind would only keep their thinking about art and it's place in their life in a very narrow channel. Our tastes do change and our interests can grow but the initial pieces of a collection will always have a significant place in a collection--if at the least emotionally. It is also the assessment of this process of change in a collection and what caused it that is beneficial AND interesting. Most importantly, it is likely that they would not regret their purchases at all, but love them!

Paige asked me to guest write an entry after she was unable to attend a lecture at the Armory that we had both planned to go to--about beginning a collection. It was the first in a series of lectures developed by ARCO and two of the people on the panel were Don and Mera Rubell. All the panelists I thought were incredible (I love hearing people talk about their collections and what motivates them), but it was Mera Rubell who said a couple of things that made the hairs on my arms stand up. When speaking to the topic of mistakes she said their mistakes had been the pieces they didn't buy. POW! I think these missed opportunities can sometimes haunt you and that is inspiring in it's own weird way...that art can do that. I love it.

Comments

[Tyler Green]

Translation of what Mera said:

I wish Vito Acconci was masturbating in MY living room.

(See the bottom of this link if you don't get the joke! http://www.artsjournal.com/man/archives20040301.shtml#73015)

[Barry Hoggard]

Hi, Erin!

James and I had those "if only" thoughts after visiting the Whitney Biennial. Of the young artists in the show whose work we don't have, a significant number of them had been on our "maybe" list over the last year.

Too late now, price-wise I expect, for most of them.