New Museum of Contemporary Art, NYC

Thanks to the hashtag #TheKeeper Mahattan’s New Museum of Contemporary Art has been sharing posts on Instagram featuring some interesting private collections to coincide with their temporary exhibit dedicated to the act of preserving sometimes valueless objects, artworks, and images. Artnet News’s Brian Boucher describes the exhibition as an exploration of “the impulse to preserve, archive, and protect objects, and… [the] blurred lines between benign and destructive forms of classification.” I remember my dissertation supervisor in graduate school once saying “Everybody’s a collector” and guess what? He isn’t wrong. Some of the collections on New Museum’s Instagram include collections of old hotel keys, clicky pens, vintage Penguin paperbacks, and old buttons. What do I collect, you ask? Well, besides useless university degrees…I have lots and lots of cow-related things. Now ask yourself what you collect? Because in this capitalist world, it’s gotta be something.