Has Collecting Really Died Or Just Changed Direction?

Anna Somers Cocks OBE, Founder editor of The Art Newspaper and journalist

My introduction to collecting was, aged seven, in my late grandmother’s Venetian palazzo, which had six, big 17th-century, Spanish chests, vargueños, down the great central sala, their little drawers full of endlessly exciting things: fans, coins, mosaic tesserae, shells, Spanish silver reliquaries, African talismans and so on. She was definitely in the category of true collectors and although I met her once because she was born long before the turn of the century, those objects literally put me in touch with her. They passed from her hands directly into mine. I was planning to be a doctor, but some how I ended up as an Assistant Keeper (when that title still existed) at the Victoria & Albert Museum. Granny had intervened.

Then, in my 13 years at the V&A, I got to know the collectors of the past whose enthusiasms had built up the museum, but also those of my counterparts, such as Gillian Wilson at the Getty, who were true collectors themselves, the ones with the personal, passionate urge to acquire for their institutions, while others were happier just studying or teaching.

I have spent time with major collectors including Heini Thyssen, Jayne Wrightsman, and Sir Paul Ruddock. I have observed the way in which collecting knowledge and collecting objects goes together.

When I first joined the V&A in the 1970s, we were told that one of the reasons for our collections was for outside collectors to be able to come and compare their pieces. That synergy sounds quaint now, but it bound the museum and collectors together in a mutually beneficial way, so what happened to weaken this bond? Was it the V&A’s own diminished interest in collecting, or the decline in collecting outside the museum?

I shall try to answer this question by analysing some true collectors I have known and also looking at the economic, social and intellectual forces that have been at play. I will even attempt to suggest what lies ahead.