Recommended Christmas reading: fascinating stories of tormented collectors

The books we have selected for this Christmas reading list are inspired by the exhibition AMONG THE INVISIBLE JOINS Works from the Enea Righi Collection. In all three volumes we are recommending, the main character is a collector: passionate, stubborn and sometimes even a little paranoid. Happy reading!

Erling Kagge, born in Oslo in 1963, is an art collector, publisher, writer and climber. In this guide, which is divided into 25 chapters, Kagge recounts his first steps in the art world. One of these is his very first artwork, which he acquires in exchange for two bottles of Bordeaux. The picture is a signed and numbered lithograph of a black-haired woman who reminds him of his first girlfriend. Each chapter offers a piece of advice, which Kagge then shows us how to put into practice by means of an entertaining anecdote. The collector accompanies us through great and legendary art galleries, revealing their characters and dynamics, and educating potential collectors on how to train their senses and follow their instincts when selecting and acquiring an artwork. “Good collectors collect with their noses and ears, as well as their eyes. It is not always easy to tell the difference between bad and great art: I sometimes find they look alike”. (p.52, A poor collector’s guide, 2015)

Erling Kagge’s works have been displayed in numerous international museums and in 2020 Museion hosted part of his collection in its WALKING exhibition. Movements North of Bolzano

Our second book is the novel “The Museum of Innocence” by the Turkish author Orhan Pamuk. This tells the story of Kemal, a young man from a rich family in Istanbul, who falls madly in love with the beautiful Füsun, his distant cousin. The couple’s troubled love affair is so obsessive that Kemal begins collecting hundreds of objects that remind him of her. These include what she has smelled, touched or even just looked at. So, there are porcelain dogs, mirrors, handkerchiefs, rulers, earrings, combs, hairpins, photographs and even cigarette butts. “During the first few months after my release from the hospital, whenever I went to the Merahamet Apartments to sit down on the bed and smoke a cigarette and view the surrounding objects, a feeling awoke in me that if I could tell my story I could ease my pain. But to do so I would have to bring my entire collection out into the open” (p. 490, Random House, 2009). All the objects described in the novel were actually collected by Pamuk and exhibited at the Museum of Innocence, a real museum located near the center of Istanbul and opened to the public in 2012.

The third book we are recommending is by Bruce Chatwin, a British writer and traveler, who tells the story of a wealthy Prague collector named Kaspar Utz. Utz collects Meissen porcelain with fanatical passion because: “An object in a museum case must suffer the de-natured existence of an animal in a zoo. In any museum, the object dies - of suffocation and the public gaze - whereas private ownership confers on the owner the right and the need to touch. As a young child will reach out to handle the thing it names, so the passionate collector, his eye in harmony with his hand, returns to the object the life-giving touch of its maker” (p. 18, Adelphi, 2003). Utz therefore dedicates his entire life to expanding and protecting his porcelain collection both during the Nazi regime and in the years of the Soviet invasion. His two-room apartment in Prague is packed with over a thousand carefully ordered pieces, including plates, vases, jugs and mugs, carnival characters, court ladies and a host of animal figurines of all species. When he dies, though, the whole collection seems to have vanished into thin air. Is it the stern state officials or the collector himself who has smashed his precious porcelain to smithereens and thrown it in the city dump to save it from unworthy hands?

The exhibition AMONG THE INVISIBLE JOINS Works from the Enea Righi Collection is on view in Museion until 02.03.2025. Opening hours Tue-Sun 10 a.m. - 6 p.m., Thu 10 a.m. - 10 p.m. (free admission from 6 p.m.)

The exhibition project presents a wide range of artworks, architectural projects and artist’s books by renowned international artists; the selected works encourage viewers and spectators to reflect on the transitional spaces of contemporary existence, where socio-political tensions are intertwined with artistic expression.