On collecting art and culture

The first thing i noticed when i was reading this article was the way in which the author explained the need for society to be brought up in a world where possessions are to be collected and held onto. Collecting as he says is a new personal fetish in the Western world starting from childhood where the child brings together his favorite toys and puts them away secretly in a hiding spot. We are a society preoccupied with the property of others, and we like to show them off in displays in which they are looked at and categorized.

Clifford says that the "the notion that this gathering involves the accumulation of possessions, the idea that identitiy is a kind of wealth, is surely not universal", it only seems that Western culture has an effect which makes us gather the material world around us to make it ours. It strikes me as odd that since birth we've been taught what is ours to keep but yet we still have to share with others that it is indeed Ours. I feel like the phrase a "material world" holds true in the West, because really without our things, we'd basically be a nobody. We grew up with things and most likely we'd die with our things, but the fact that we Have things and we Own them makes all the difference in the world.

I believe the right is not ours to just take and label artifacts or art of any kind just to put a monetary value on it and display it for everyone to see and learn more about its origins. The idea of art is that its in a museum and its on display for all to see, culture is what is behind it and how the art was founded, but because we put it on display, we've already given it something of a comercial value. What makes artefacts authentic or inauthentic really is not up to us as a society but to the original meaning of artefact. The aestheticism of the arts has really just been enforcing the fact that institutions like museums and galleries are showing people what they would like, or perhaps leading up to the theft of the arts.

Culture really is being collected but studied intensively and because it is studied under such scrutiny but because anthropologists keep going out to different cultures to study them, they really are just letting the culture be tainted by the Western world, even if but a little bit. Mead wrote that many cultures have already been "badly missionized" and really then its not a unique culture but a new addition to ours.

When Claude Levi-Strauss visited New York, he was amazed at all the cultures that could be seen in just Manhatten alone. I live in NYC so i completely understand his amazement, everday in the city you could come face to face with just about any and all types of art and culture. NYC boasts such a wide array of different cultures and people that it becomes like a huge mesh of everything on every corner of the street. It really is just sad though because these cultures are seemingly fleeting and would soon die out to just another mesh into American culture.

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