Pictures, Patents, Monkeys and More…On Collecting

Pictures, Patents, Monkeys, and More…On Collecting examines the collecting impulse in its various incarnations, raising fundamental questions about why we collect and why we collect what we collect. Surprising and eccentric, this publication features three utterly different collections: Pictures (and other contemporary art objects) from the renowned Robert Shiffler Foundation in Ohio; Patents, a selection of the Smithsonian’s collection of patent models submitted to the US Patent Office in the nineteenth century; and finally Monkeys, from a private New York-based collection of approximately 1,600 sock monkeys toys. Running the gamut from high art to the unmapped inspirational dregs of American culture, Pictures, Patents, Monkeys, and More…On Collecting draws on such diverse talents as Ingrid Schaffner–adjunct curator at ICA Philadelphia–and artist Arne Svenson, whose photographs of the sock monkeys combine the haunting and the beautiful. Also included are such artists as Janine Antoni, Willie Coles, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Christian Marclay, Alan Rath, Jason Rhoades, Kay Rosen, Jessica Stockholder and Lisa Yuskavage, among many others.