Collecting and Modes of Display

Artworks concerned with the activity of gathering and displaying objects or documents in some type of organizational scheme. Such works often question the authority and objectivity of institutional practices of cataloging, conservation, and display encountered in museums, libraries, archives, or collections of scientific specimens. Other works may examine the personal meaning attributed to objects that are collected or the desire to amass, own, and make sense of art, mass-produced objects, or curiosities of the natural world.