Journal articles on the topic 'Art Collectors and collecting Australia History'

The history of Prajnaparamita, Goddess of Wisdom, a twelfth-century Indian Buddhist sculpture in the National Gallery of Australia collection, has been researched and evaluated through a dedicated Asian Art Provenance Project. This article describes how the sculpture was traced from twelfth-century Odisha, India, to museums in Depression-era Brooklyn and Philadelphia, through dealers and private collectors Earl and Irene Morse, to Canberra, Australia, where it has been since 1990. Frieda Hauswirth Das (1886–1974), previously obscured from art-collecting records, is revealed as the private collector who purchased the sculpture in India in around 1930. Incidental discoveries are then documented, extending the published provenance of objects in museum collections in the United States and Europe. Finally, consideration is given to the sculpture’s changing legal and ethical position, and the collecting rationales of its various collectors. The case study illustrates the contributions provenance research can make to archeological, art-historical, and collections knowledge, and elucidates aspects of the heterodox twentieth-century Asian art trade, as well as concomitant shifts in collecting ethics.

Abstract From the nineteenth century, Sydney’s Art Gallery of New South Wales has been a marker of cultural ambition in Australia. This paper critically considers five large French paintings purchased at the end of the nineteenth century at significant expense by the gallery. Feted by contemporaries as examples of the French academic style, they formed part of plans to develop a representative collection to further understanding of art in the colony and, over time, they have taken on a rich role in the collective cultural memory. Through close examination of these paintings, their historical reception, criticism, reproduction and traces in the gallery’s archives this article reveals a history of taste, class and the formation of the cultural value of art. Using an object-based approach, it positions these works as evidence of changing cultural ideas within the context of a state collection to offer new insight into their status, the gallery itself, and the multiple roles of public art collections.

Trading Lines is a photo essay that tracks nearly twenty years of research within international museums as well as collecting and sharing photographs and objects. This research began in 1996 at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter, where I encountered an Aboriginal skull from N.S.W. Australia —that was part of the active international Aboriginal human remains trade activated from the early 18th century. This photo essay shares correspondence between myself and private and public collection managers and collectors. Some images are from actual installations where I have combined objects with artworks, as a whole, it is an attempt to draw lines between pure collection activities and legitimate anguish many people feel for not only their cultural heritage but also those of the human remains trade. Even though repatriation of human remains to Aboriginal communities in Australia has been an active endeavor over the last 10 or more years, many human remains, photos and other important documents are still being uncovered, repatriated and traded. The comparable texts and images explore the margins of both museum practice and community involvement and understanding of these actions and communications. I intend to present this photo essay as an archive that engages people within their own curiosity of access to a complex world of negotiations. Further documents, human remains and other materials are gradually and continually unearthed in museums and sold through private collections and markets. Reflecting on this, who owns their own culture and history, and how does a culture remember when they are not in receipt of their cultural materials. I hope to stimulate important considerations about the power of a public archive, noting the complex protocol tensions that can arise and how these lines or margins are negotiated, crossed, hidden or shared.

The Dance Collection at Arts Centre Melbourne traces the history of dance in Australia from the late nineteenth century to today. The collection encompasses the work of many of Australia's major dance companies and individual performers whilst spanning a range of genres, from contemporary dance and ballet, to theatrical, modern, folk and social dance styles. The Dance Collection is part of the broader Australian Performing Arts Collection, which covers the five key areas of circus, dance, opera, music and theatre. In my overview of Arts Centre Melbourne's (ACM) Dance Collection, I will outline how the collection has grown and highlight the strengths and weaknesses associated with different methods of collecting. I will also identify major gaps in the archive and how we aim to fill these gaps and create a well-balanced and dynamic view of Australian dance history. Material relating to international touring artists and companies including Lola Montez, Adeline Genée, Anna Pavlova and the Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo provide an understanding of how early trends in dance performance have influenced our own traditions. Scrapbooks, photographs and items of costume provide glimpses into performances of some of the world's most famous dance performers and productions. As many of these scrapbooks were compiled by enthusiastic and appreciative audience members, they also record the emerging audience for dance, which placed Australia firmly on the touring schedule of many international performers in the early decades of the 20th century. The personal stories and early ambitions that led to the formation of our national companies are captured in collections relating to the history of the Borovansky Ballet, Ballet Guild, Bodenwieser Ballet, and the National Theatre Ballet. Costume and design are a predominant strength of these collections. Through them, we discover and appreciate the colour, texture and creative industry behind pivotal works that were among the first to explore Australian narratives through dance. These collections also tell stories of migration and reveal the diverse cultural roots that have helped shape the training of Australian dancers, choreographers and designers in both classical and contemporary dance styles. The development of an Australian repertoire and the role this has played in the growth of our dance culture is particularly well documented in collections assembled collaboratively with companies such as The Australian Ballet, Sydney Dance Company, and Chunky Move. These companies are at the forefront of dance in Australia and as they evolve and mature under respective artistic directors, we work closely with them to capture each era and the body of work that best illustrates their output through costumes, designs, photographs, programmes, posters and flyers. The stories that link these large, professional companies to a thriving local, contemporary dance community of small to medium professional artists here in Melbourne will also be told. In order to develop a well-balanced and dynamic view of Australian dance history, we are building the archive through meaningful collecting relationships with contemporary choreographers, dancers, designers, costume makers and audiences. I will conclude my overview with a discussion of the challenges of active collecting with limited physical storage and digital space and the difficulties we face when making this archive accessible through exhibitions and online in a dynamic, immersive and theatrical way.

International scientific and practical conference “Rumyantsev readings — 2019” was held on April 23—24 in the Russian State Library. The conference covered a wide range of issues: “Libraries and museums in the context of history”; “History of the Russian State Library”; “Disclosure of universal and specialized collections of libraries: forms and methods”; “Future of libraries: evaluations, studies, forecasts”; “Libraries as centres of information-bibliographic activities”; “Library collections and library-information services in the age of electronic communications”; “Professional development of library staff: demands of time. Library as educational centre”; “International cooperation of libraries. Library as a platform for intercultural dialogue”. The conference was attended by specialists from libraries, museums, archives, universities and research institutes, representatives of professional associations and organizations from various regions of Russia and from Australia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Latvia, the United States of America, Tajikistan and Ukraine. Among the sections and round tables of “Rumyantsev readings” were both traditional, held within the framework of the conference on annual basis, and timed to the memorable dates and visits of foreign colleagues of the year. In 2019, the following sections were held: “Art editions in the collections of libraries: issues of study, preservation and promotion”, “Library classification systems”, “Rare and valuable books, book monuments and collections”, “Manuscript sources in the collections of libraries”, “Specialized collections in libraries”, “Collectors, researchers, keepers. Libraries in the context of history”, “Continuing education as a competence resource of library staff”, “Theory and practice of librarianship development at the present stage”, “Library digitalization: trends, problems, prospects”, “Effective library management: problems and solutions. (Pre-session meeting of the 32nd Section of the Russian Library Association on library management and marketing)”. Seminar from the series “Role of science in the development of libraries (theoretical and practical aspects)” “N.M. Sikorsky: scientist, organizer of book science and librarianship. To the 100th birth anniversary” took place. There were organized Round tables: “The new National standard for bibliographic description GOST R 7.0.100—2018 in the modern information environment”, “Library terminology in the context of digital space”, “Cooperation of libraries of the CIS countries: strategic directions”, “Flagship projects that shape the future of libraries”. The growing number of participants, the breadth of topics, the steady interest of specialists in traditional sections and the annual organization of new events in the form and content of the “Rumyantsev readings” allow the conference to stay among the largest scientific and practical events of library research in the country. The search for new topics and the introduction of topical issues on the agenda contribute to both activation of historical research and the search for ways of innovative development and intercultural interaction.

The growth of art history and art practice courses in Australia has been remarkable over the last 20 years. Unfortunately training for art librarianship has not matched this growth. There are eleven universities in Australia offering graduate degrees and post-graduate diplomas in librarianship but none offer specific courses leading towards a specialisation in art librarianship. ARLIS/ANZ provides opportunities for training and education. Advances in scholarly art research and publishing in Australia, the development of Australian-related electronic art databases, the growth of specialist collections in State and public libraries, and the increased demand by the general community for art-related information, confirm the need for well-developed skills in the management and dissemination of art information.

Taxidermy made for display is often considered less significant in museum research collections. This is because historical taxidermy material often becomes disassociated with key data and through the rigours of public display, end up in poor physical condition. However by tracing a specimen's biography as a living animal and following its transition into a museum afterlife, much can be revealed about the development of natural history collections and changing attitudes towards animals. This presentation will investigate several pieces of taxidermy in the zoology collection of the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG) (http://www.tmag.tas.gov.au/collections_and_research/zoology/collections), where research has uncovered surprising stories and helped reassess the significance and cultural value of this material. An unregistered lion head, identified as animal celebrity John Burns, tells the story of the golden age of Australian and New Zealand circuses, changing attitudes around animal ethics in the circus and the negotiations between scientific institutions in acquiring exotics species in the late nineteenth century. A collection of taxidermied domestic chickens from the 1940s is found to mark the modernisation of the TMAG public displays in communicating current research and the development of a dedicated museum education unit. The colourful afterlife of these specimens in the museum collection highlights struggles with storage issues, changes in collecting priorities and evolution of public display and education at TMAG.

This paper describes a project to record specialised oral histories of key individuals involved with Australia's principal scientific research organisation, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). The oral histories are intended to complement official governance documents in a larger project to write a history of CSIRO. Oral histories typically include perspectives on family backgrounds and childhood, professional training and career histories. Of particular interest in these interviews is the involvement of interviewees in the management of CSIRO and their reflections on the place of CSIRO in the Australian and international scientific environments. The interviews were conducted mainly by two of the authors (Spurling and Healy), both of whom were well known to the interviewees because they were themselves senior managers in CSIRO and familiar with the topics discussed. These histories are intended to illuminate important personal factors that have influenced decision-making in CSIRO. Also covered are plans to use other collections of interview materials in the CSIRO History Project (CHP), including those conducted by CSIRO historian Boris Schedvin, the Australian Academy of Science and the National Library of Australia. Details are provided of preparations for interviews, recording and transcription and preparation of materials for public access through CSIROpedia.

Australia has traditionally adopted a Eurocentric outlook which has begun to be modified in the last decade by reappraisal of the country’s location in the Asia-Pacific region. The Australian National Gallery has only recently developed its collections of the textiles of South and Southeastern Asia and of related research materials, yet it already accommodates the world’s leading public collection of Indian textiles exported to Southeast Asia. Acquisition of both contemporary and antiquarian library materials has been complicated by the range of languages and cultures involved, the history of the textile trade, colonial publishing, and the problems encountered in dealing with a varying degree of organisation in local publishing and distribution. Nonetheless, with patience, as a result of travelling, by means of networking, and with the help of distributors, it has proved possible to build a worthwhile collection without depending too exclusively on Western publications.

Warning Readers of this article are warned that it may contain terms, descriptions and opinions that are culturally sensitive and/or offensive to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. Silesian-born Lothar Becker spent two periods in Australia, during which he made observations on a range of natural history topics, including fungi—a group of organisms rarely noticed by contemporary naturalists. Becker compiled notes, sketches and collections of Australian fungi that he sent to Elias Fries in Sweden for identification. Unfortunately, this material has not survived, but Becker’s accounts of his time in Australia, especially that published in Das Ausland in 1873, contain remarkable first-hand observations, including some on exotic fungi. Becker’s article is one of the earliest stand-alone analyses of the affinities of the Australian mycota. Remarks on the use of fungi by Aboriginal peoples of south-eastern Australia are particularly significant, due to inclusion of a word presumed to be from Aboriginal language and the suggestion of gendered roles in the collection of edible fungi.

From the end of the nineteenth century and up to the beginning of World War II, many of Maksymilian Gierymski’s (1846-1874) works were part of the collections of respected Jewish collectors, including Maksymilian Adam Oderfeld, Edward Rejcher, Stanisław Rotwand, Adolf Peretz, and Abe Gutnajer. They combined buying Polish art with providing financial support for many Polish cultural institutions. Thanks to these collectors the Polish public had better knowledge of Gierymski’s art. They bought his works at a time when the best examples of his oeuvre were abroad. 1939 was a tragic turning point for their activity. Collections were destroyed or stolen, including Gierymski’s work, and most of these items were not catalogued. Nevertheless, the collectors’ knowledge, passion, and expertise raised the bar for standards in Polish art collecting generally. The forgotten activity of Poland’s Jewish collectors is an essential part of the history of nineteenth-century Polish art.

ORION is a digital art history research-oriented project focused on the study of art collections and collectors in Portugal, supported on a relational database management system. Besides the obvious advantage of organizing and systematizing an enormous amount of information, promoting its analysis, this database was specifically designed to highlight the relationships between data. Its relational capacity is not only one of the most relevant features of ORION, but a differentiating quality, one step forward in comparison to other international databases and studies that use digital methodologies. This article discusses the methods and the advantages of using ORION in research related to the history of collecting, art markets and provenance of art objects in Portugal, where it is the very first time that an approach such as this is intended, looking for a systematization of data that paves the way to the emergence of new research questions. Furthermore, and because ORION aims to share the data and knowledge with other projects, institutions and researchers, the database uses different international standards, such as data structure (CIDOC-OIC and Getty-CDWA), controlled vocabulary (Iconclass, Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT), Thesaurus of Geographic Names (TGN), and Union List of Artist Names (ULAN)) and communication and exchange of information (CIDOC-CRM).

The article studies the origins and features of the art collecting at the territory of modern Ukraine. Socio-cultural, geo-political and historical backsground of the 17th–18th centuries became subject for consideration while making conclusions regarding the reasons and period when art collecting became widespread among the ruling elites and noble families of the region. The history of such collections is examined, their main characteristics and components at the time when Ukraine was divided into Left-bank and Right-bank Ukraine were observed.The research identifies main types of artistic practices widespread at that time in Ukraine, which served as the source of collectibles for private and primary institutional collections. The article considers differences of art collecting phenomenon caused by geographical context (Right-bank, Left-bank Ukraine) and by the changes in political and religious factors that all had impacted behavior and preferences of collectors. The research covers main well-known art collectors and demonstrates examples of collections, which laid the foundation for the transformation of collecting from the individual accumulation and preservation of cultural values to the formation of museum-level collections of national and worldwide importance.

Abstract During the Meiji period, following the opening of Japan's borders to foreign trade, not only did the Japanese lacquer trading system and the market undergo a marked change but so too did almost all the factors affecting collecting activities: the European reception of the aesthetics and history of Japanese lacquer art, the taste of the collectors, the structure of private collections, the systematization of museum collections, along with changes in the art canon in the second half of the nineteenth century. The patterns of collecting Japanese lacquer art in the second half of the nineteenth century cannot be understood in depth without discussing shortly its preliminaries in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, focusing also on the art historical reception of Japanese lacquer in Europe. Supplementary material relating to this article in the form of a list of dealers and distributors of lacquer in Japan during the Meiji period (1868–1912) is available online.

A.V. Chayanov was primarily an agrarian economist, but he also possessed encyclopedic interests and knowledge and wrote a series of articles on the history of art, which reflect his peculiar sociology of art. This article is a review of the collection of works which include articles written by this outstanding social thinker. The author considers that Chayanov’s articles on the history of collecting artwork in Moscow and on the history of West-European engraving show the original features of his sociological interdisciplinary analysis. Chayanov studied various aspects of social life — history and economics, art and culture — to identify the historical-social types of collectors of fine artwork, the impact of social crises on the nature of collecting, the problems of elitism and egalitarianism in art, and the directions of people’s cultural development. All of these issues are still relevant to contemporary studies of art.

AbstractIn recent decades, historians have become increasingly interested in the logistical challenges and difficulties encountered by those responsible for the collection, preservation and safe transport of specimens from the field to the museum or laboratory. This article builds on this trend by looking beyond apparent successes to consider the practices and practicalities of shipboard travel and maritime and coastal collecting activities. The discussion focuses on the example of William Henry Harvey, who travelled to Australia in pursuit of cryptogams – non-flowering plants like mosses, lichens and algae – in 1853. In his private correspondence to family and friends, Harvey offered insights into the challenges and obstacles faced by all collectors in the period. His experiences were fundamentally shaped by the material culture, embodied knowledge and physical constraints he encountered on the way. On one level, shipboard and onshore collecting activities were facilitated by the connections forged by new technologies and Britain's global empire. But they also depended on specific contexts and relied on local agents and actors, as well as on the physical and technical facilities (and limitations) of those doing the collecting. The examples of Harvey and others shed light on the real, ‘lived’ experiences of individual collectors, the difficulties and challenges they encountered in amassing their collections, and the networks of people on which they relied.

My essay considers the history of collecting the art of Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) artists in the twentieth century. For decades Native visual and material culture was viewed under the guise of ‘crafts.’ I look back to the work of Lewis Henry Morgan on Haudenosaunee material culture. His writings helped establish a specific notion of Haudenosaunee material culture within the scholarly field of anthropology in the nineteenth century. At that point two-dimensional arts did not play a substantial role in Haudenosaunee visual culture, even though both Tuscarora and Seneca artists had produced drawings and paintings then. I investigate the turn toward collecting two-dimensional Haudenosaunee representational art, where before there was only craft. I locate this turn at the beginning of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s administration in the 1930s. It was at this point that Seneca anthropologist Arthur C. Parker recruited Native crafts people and painters working in two-dimensional art forms to participate in a Works Progress Administration-sponsored project known as the Seneca Arts Program. Thereafter, museum collectors began purchasing and displaying paintings by the artists: Jesse Cornplanter, Sanford Plummer, and Ernest Smith. I argue that their representation in museum collections opened the door for the contemporary Haudenosaunee to follow.

Interest in Chinese art has swelled in the United States in recent years. In 2015, the collection of the late dealer-collector Robert Hatfield Ellsworth fetched no less than $134 million at auction (much of it from Mainland Chinese buyers), while the Metropolitan Museum of Art drew over 800,000 visitors to its galleries for the blockbuster show “China: Through the Looking Glass”—the fifth most-visited exhibition in the museum’s 130-year history. The roots of this interest in Chinese art reach back to the first two decades of the 20th Century and are grounded in the geopolitical questions of those years. Drawing from records of major collectors and museums in New York and Washington, D.C., this article argues that the United States became a major international center for collecting and studying Chinese art through cosmopolitan collaboration with European partners and, paradoxically, out of a nationalist sentiment justifying hegemony over a foreign culture derived from an ideology of American exceptionalism in the Pacific. This article frames the development of Chinese art as a contested process of knowledge production between the United States, Europe, and China that places the history of collecting in productive conversation with the history of Sino-American relations and imperialism.

The article explores various aspects of the practice of collecting works of classical art in Renaissance Venice, as well as its influence on the content program formation of the so-called “Collector’s Portrait”, a typological kind of portraiture common in the art of the 16th century. The most interesting examples of it are the “Portrait of Andrea Odoni” by Lorenzo Lotto and the “Portrait of Jacopo Strada” by Titian, considered in this article. The study is relevant because of its connection with the research attention, outlined in recent decades, to the history of collecting, antique trade and the role of socio-economic factors in the development of art history. The article aims to investigate, on the basis of written sources, the matter of how the content of such paintings reflects the moral and ethical ideas about the meaning of antique collecting, as well as to identify its characteristic features on the Venetian grounds. One of the features was that a significant proportion of the artistic material in private collections was composed of works of Greek-Hellenistic art. The interest in collecting these works speaks about the special aesthetic predilections of collectors, their sensitivity to the actual artistic merits of antiques, and not only about their desire to possess antiquities. In addition, the practice of collecting was intended to express the moral virtues of the collector, the greatness of their spirit and the nobility of their thoughts. On the other hand, it served as an important way of social self-assertion for those who were not part of the exclusive elite of Venetian society (patricians), but sought to approach it in their social ambitions. First of all, the article is of interest to historians, art historians, culturologists, museum specialists and antique trade specialists.

The International Exhibition of Chinese Art that took place in London’s Burlington House from November 1935 to March 1936 is recognised as the major exhibition of ancient and classical Chinese art of the twentieth century. Over two hundred collectors and institutions from 14 countries provided their objects of art to the exhibition. None of the previous exhibitions had had as many items: the number of objects was extraordinary with 3,080 entries in the catalogue of the London exhibition. Moreover, it was the first foreign exhibition presenting items from the former imperial collection of the Forbidden City (Gugun Museum since 1925). In addition to numerous porcelain and bronze items from private and museum collections, the exhibition contained about 300 paintings (monumental painting, scrolls, album sheets, and fans). While it is generally believed that western collectors only started being seriously interested in painting after World War II, the exhibition contained over a hundred paintings of non-Chinese provenance. Due to its scale, the International Exhibition of Chinese Art of 1935 could be considered a representative example of trends in the Chinese art collecting of the 1930s. For this reason, a close analysis of the catalogue may help enrich our idea of the formation of collections of Chinese art, the formation of taste, and its evolution over time. Data related to the paintings from the catalogue are analysed and then compared to the current descriptions from museum databases and catalogues.

Sixty cultural heritage leaders from 32 countries, including representatives from Africa, Asia, the Middle East, South America, Australia, Europe, and North America, gathered in October 2009 in Salzburg, Austria, to develop a series of practical recommendations to ensure optimal collections conservation worldwide. Convened at Schloss Leopoldskron, the gathering was conducted in partnership by the Salzburg Global Seminar (SGS) and the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS). The participants were conservation specialists from libraries and museums, as well as leaders of major conservation centers and cultural heritage programs from around the world. As cochair Vinod Daniel noted, no previous meeting of conservation professionals has been “as diverse as this, with people from as many parts of the world, as cross-disciplinary as this.” The group addressed central issues in the care and preservation of the world's cultural heritage, including moveable objects (library materials, books, archives, paintings, sculpture, decorative arts, photographic collections, art on paper, and archaeological and ethnographic objects) and immoveable heritage (buildings and archaeological sites).

Abstract According to mineralogical literature, some of the finest opalized wood in the world was discovered in Idaho c.1895, originating in a unique deposit along Clover Creek in Lincoln County (now Gooding County). The American mineral dealer Dr A. E. Foote acquired and processed the bulk of the discovery into specimens that were advertised between 1896 and 1904. Over a period of four years, we have identified sixteen natural history museums in Europe, North America, and Australia in possession of Clover Creek opalized oak today. Many museum acquisitions and the fossil’s taxonomic affinity, Quercinium pliocaenicum, resulted from collective networking between mineral dealers, private collectors and scientists – evidence of a common interest among a diversity of people – contributing the best specimens for museums of natural history.

This article explores the intellectual foundations for the development of princely art collections, and of Italian picture galleries in particular, as spaces for combined physical and mental exercise and recreation. This study then establishes the relationship between the therapeutic function of picture galleries and the manner in which landscape paintings produced for princely collectors at this moment in Italy embodied ideals of both exercise and repose.

The literature on the cultural interrelations of East and West published up to the present time is enormous. Even so, every new scholarly study in this field cannot but provoke interest, so important is the topic, particularly today in the era of so-called globalization. The books under review here, edited and introduced by Andrew Gerstle (SOAS) and Anthony Milner (ANU),1 are based on papers presented at conferences held by the Humanities Research Centre of the Australian National University. The theme of the conferences—‘Europe and the Orient‘—attracted a great number of specialists in art history, musicology, anthropology and history, Asianists and Europeanists, from Europe, the United States and Australia. It is worth noting that the most of the papers are based on published works in which their authors have discussed the same or closely related topics. In presenting the principal ideas of those publications, these collections of papers form a ‘miniature library’ of works on East-West comparative cultural studies. The interdisciplinarity of the articles—their extraordinary ‘polyphony’, the diversity of their often mutually contradictory and polemical approaches, judgements and evaluations—reveals the complexity, multifacetedness and theoretical difficulties which are only too characteristic of the study of comparative culture. The reader is here provided with quite a complete picture of the contemporary state of the field, as well as of the strong and weak sides of its investigations. This breadth of coverage is one of the main strengths of the volumes.

An upsurge of fascist and anti-fascist activity in Australia in the early part of the twentieth century has received sustained historical attention. Yet scholarly historical coverage of the latter part of the century has been minimal. This article demonstrates the ongoing existence of both a far-right movement and a concomitant anti-fascist opposition by focusing on Melbourne in the 1990s. It draws from interviews with anti-fascist activists and from campaign paraphernalia and press reports. It introduces the group National Action (NA), identifies its political tactics and shows how it rebranded fascist traditions from Europe and the USA by drawing on iconic figures and symbols of the Australian labour movement, anti-immigrant racist tropes and on white Australian nationalism. Anti-fascist groups were loose collections of left activists and organisations animated by memories of the racist horrors of World War II. This article shows that, over time, loosely affiliated ant-fascist groups were influenced by various overseas currents of thought about political practice. These included notions of a United or Popular Front, direct and indirect action, “no platforming” and “squaddism” respectively. The analysis draws on contemporary trends in international anti-fascism studies.

After briefly discussing ethics in general, stating the public interest in cultural property, and positing that collecting and dealing in cultural objects are not inherently unethical activities, the writer contrasts ethical attitudes toward legal controls over the international movement of people and of cultural objects. He then discusses the ethical bases of cultural property export controls and ethical questions raised by dealing in and collecting cultural objects, and identifies particular applications of export controls that are ethically unproblematic or ethically clouded. He discusses the difficult area of antiquities and questions whether anyone involved in it - from source nations, archaeologists, and ethnographers to museums, collectors, and the art trade - has clean hands. Finally, he states a hypothetical case of invited theft and asks readers to decide what the ethical response would be.

As institutions that arose during the European age of imperial expansion to glorify and display the achievements of empire, museums have historically been deeply implicated in the colonial enterprise. However if we understand coloniality not as a residue of the age of imperialism, but rather an ongoing structural feature of global dynamics, the challenge faced by museums in decolonising their practice must be viewed as ongoing. This is the case not just in former centres of empire, but in settler-colonial nations such as Australia, where “the colonisers did not go home” (Moreton-Robinson 2015: 10). As a white, Western institution, a number of arguably intrinsic features of the museum represent a significant challenge to decolonisation, including the traditional museum practices and values evinced by the universal museum. Using a number of case studies, this paper considers the extent to which mainstream museums in Australia, Britain and Europe have been able to change their practices to become more consultative and inclusive of Black and Indigenous peoples. Not only this, it discusses approaches that extend beyond a politics of inclusion to ask whether museums have been prepared to hand over representational power, by giving control of exhibitions to Black and Indigenous communities. Given the challenges posed by traditional museum values and practices, such as the strong preference of the universal museum to maintain intact collections, this paper asks whether community museums and cultural centres located within Indigenous communities may represent viable alternative models. The role of the Uluru Kata Tjuta Cultural Centre in Australia’s Northern Territory is considered in this light, including whether Traditional Custodians are able to exert control over visitor interpretation offered by this jointly managed centre to ensure that contentious aspects of Australian history are included within the interpretation. As institutions that arose during the European age of imperial expansion to glorify and display the achievements of empire, museums have historically been deeply implicated in the colonial enterprise. However if we understand coloniality not as a residue of the age of imperialism, but rather an ongoing structural feature of global dynamics, the challenge faced by museums in decolonising their practice must be viewed as ongoing. This is the case not just in former centres of empire, but in settler-colonial nations such as Australia, where “the colonisers did not go home” (Moreton-Robinson 2015: 10). As a white, Western institution, a number of arguably intrinsic features of the museum represent a significant challenge to decolonisation, including the traditional museum practices and values evinced by the universal museum. Using a number of case studies, this paper considers the extent to which mainstream museums in Australia, Britain and Europe have been able to change their practices to become more consultative and inclusive of Black and Indigenous peoples. Not only this, it discusses approaches that extend beyond a politics of inclusion to ask whether museums have been prepared to hand over representational power, by giving control of exhibitions to Black and Indigenous communities. Given the challenges posed by traditional museum values and practices, such as the strong preference of the universal museum to maintain intact collections, this paper asks whether community museums and cultural centres located within Indigenous communities may represent viable alternative models. The role of the Uluru Kata Tjuta Cultural Centre in Australia’s Northern Territory is considered in this light, including whether Traditional Custodians are able to exert control over visitor interpretation offered by this jointly managed centre to ensure that contentious aspects of Australian history are included within the interpretation. As institutions that arose during the European age of imperial expansion to glorify and display the achievements of empire, museums have historically been deeply implicated in the colonial enterprise. However if we understand coloniality not as a residue of the age of imperialism, but rather an ongoing structural feature of global dynamics, the challenge faced by museums in decolonising their practice must be viewed as ongoing. This is the case not just in former centres of empire, but in settler-colonial nations such as Australia, where “the colonisers did not go home” (Moreton-Robinson 2015: 10). As a white, Western institution, a number of arguably intrinsic features of the museum represent a significant challenge to decolonisation, including the traditional museum practices and values evinced by the universal museum. Using a number of case studies, this paper considers the extent to which mainstream museums in Australia, Britain and Europe have been able to change their practices to become more consultative and inclusive of Black and Indigenous peoples. Not only this, it discusses approaches that extend beyond a politics of inclusion to ask whether museums have been prepared to hand over representational power, by giving control of exhibitions to Black and Indigenous communities. Given the challenges posed by traditional museum values and practices, such as the strong preference of the universal museum to maintain intact collections, this paper asks whether community museums and cultural centres located within Indigenous communities may represent viable alternative models. The role of the Uluru Kata Tjuta Cultural Centre in Australia’s Northern Territory is considered in this light, including whether Traditional Custodians are able to exert control over visitor interpretation offered by this jointly managed centre to ensure that contentious aspects of Australian history are included within the interpretation. As institutions that arose during the European age of imperial expansion to glorify and display the achievements of empire, museums have historically been deeply implicated in the colonial enterprise. However if we understand coloniality not as a residue of the age of imperialism, but rather an ongoing structural feature of global dynamics, the challenge faced by museums in decolonising their practice must be viewed as ongoing. This is the case not just in former centres of empire, but in settler-colonial nations such as Australia, where “the colonisers did not go home” (Moreton-Robinson 2015: 10). As a white, Western institution, a number of arguably intrinsic features of the museum represent a significant challenge to decolonisation, including the traditional museum practices and values evinced by the universal museum. Using a number of case studies, this paper considers the extent to which mainstream museums in Australia, Britain and Europe have been able to change their practices to become more consultative and inclusive of Black and Indigenous peoples. Not only this, it discusses approaches that extend beyond a politics of inclusion to ask whether museums have been prepared to hand over representational power, by giving control of exhibitions to Black and Indigenous communities. Given the challenges posed by traditional museum values and practices, such as the strong preference of the universal museum to maintain intact collections, this paper asks whether community museums and cultural centres located within Indigenous communities may represent viable alternative models. The role of the Uluru Kata Tjuta Cultural Centre in Australia’s Northern Territory is considered in this light, including whether Traditional Custodians are able to exert control over visitor interpretation offered by this jointly managed centre to ensure that contentious aspects of Australian history are included within the interpretation.

The article analyzes private art collecting in 1990s–2000s in Ukraine. It is important to mention that collecting works of art in Ukraine of the time indicated in the article does not have comprehensive coverage. The complexity of the study of this issue is also due to the closeness and limitation of access to private collections. The collapse of the USSR, the transition from a totalitarian regime to democracy and the establishment of a market economy in Ukraine contributed to the formation and creation of private collections of artistic works. At this time, three main branches of non-state collecting begin to form: private collections, corporate collections of institutions (banks, insurance companies) and foundations. In the early 1990s the practice of collecting works by banks came to Ukraine from the West. Ukrincombank, Southern Bank, Gradobank, etc. were involved in that work. The interest of private individuals in forming their own collections also begins with Ukraine’s acquisition of Independence, but gains momentum in the early 2000s. The art collections were represented by E. Dymshyts, L. Bereznitsky, A. Adamovsky, I. Voronov, V. Pinchuk and others. One of the most important collections began to be initiated by Boris and Tatiana Hrynyov family of in 1996. Their idea of the collection arose from the concept of Kharkiv artists. In the circle of their interests — the art of Soviet nonconformists and Ukrainian contemporary art. Foundations of art appeared in Ukraine after the proclamation of Independence in 1991. These are non-governmental and non-profit organizations, established by private or corporate enti- ties. Important foundations in Ukraine, that have their own collections of art, are Soviart, Alexander Feldman Foundation, Stedley Art Foundation etc. The collections of the 1990s and 2000s are very important for the history of Ukrainian art and collecting. The collectors of this period have played a key role in preserving the artistic heritage of Independent Ukraine.

The article is an attempt to show collecting achievements of Rev. Jan Wiśniewski (1876–1943), who after building an unusual, astonishingly vast and versatile collection of art and national memorabilia, donated it to the Diocesan Museum in Sandomierz. His collecting was rooted in the 19th century, in the spirit of growing patriotic awareness and interests in the history of one’s own country, resulted from the lack of independence. Apart from collecting, Rev. Wiśniewski conducted comprehensive research. As an amateur historian, he edited and published at his own cost 15 volumes of the Monografia dekanatów and Historyczne opisy kościołów. He started his collection in Radom, then continued accumulating items in Borkowice where he became a parish priest. It was there, in the parsonage, that he arranged the Museum of National Memorabilia. His exhibits were often displayed as loans outside his museum. As confirmed in written sources, Rev. Jan Wiśniewski had many contacts among collectors, antiquarians, art dealers and bibliophiles, some of them of great renown. His collection became a cornerstone of the Diocesan Museum in Sandomierz, which seems to be his intention from the start, as much as saving from demolition the historic elements of churches’ interiors. He was building his collection in order to make it public and pass on to the following generations.

The article is an introduction to the conference “From the history of collecting: patrons, collectors, founders of museums”, organized by the Russian Academy of Arts. The author's address to the participants is devoted to a short story about people whose names are associated with the concept of “charity” — patrons, collectors, founders of museums in Russia and abroad. These are well-known personalities of various national schools, who became famous for their deeds in the field of caring for the preservation of cultural heritage. The purpose of the conference is to remember their names and noble activities. Статья представляет собой вступительное слово к конференции «Из истории собирательства: меценаты, коллекционеры, основатели музеев», организованной Российской академией художеств. Обращение автора к участникам посвящено краткому рассказу о людях, чьи имена связаны с понятием «благотворительность», — меценатах, коллекционерах, основателях музеев России и зарубежных стран. Это известные личности разных национальных школ, своими деяниями прославившиеся на поприще заботы о сохранении культурного наследия. Цель конференции — вспомнить их имена и благородную деятельность.

Hugh Miller (1802-1856), Scottish geologist, newspaper editor and writer, is a perhaps unique example of a geologist with a museum dedicated to him in his birthplace cottage, in Cromarty, northern Scotland. He finally housed his geological collection, principally of Scottish fossils, in a purpose-built museum at his house in Portobello, now in Edinburgh. After his death, the collection was purchased in 1859 by Government grant and public appeal, in part as a memorial to Miller, for the Natural History Museum (successively Edinburgh Museum of Science and Art, Royal Scottish Museum, and part of National Museums Scotland). The collection's documentation, curation and display over the years are outlined, using numerical patterns in the documentation as part of the evidence for its history. A substantial permanent display of the Miller Collection, partly by the retired Benjamin Peach (1842-1926), was installed from c. 1912 to 1939, and briefly postwar. A number of temporary displays, and one small permanent display, were thereafter created, especially for the 1952 and 2002 anniversaries. Miller's birthplace cottage was preserved by the family and a museum established there in 1885 by Miller's son Hugh Miller the younger (1850-1896) of the Geological Survey, with the assistance of his brother Lieutenant-Colonel William Miller (1842-1893) of the Indian Army, and the Quaker horticulturalist Sir Thomas Hanbury (c. 1832-1907), using a selection of specimens retained by the family in 1859. It may not have been fully opened to the public till 1888. It was refurbished for the 1902 centenary. A proposal to open a Hugh Miller Institute in Cromarty, combining a library and museum, to mark the centenary, was only partly successful, and the library element only was built. The cottage museum was transferred to the Cromarty Burgh Council in 1926 and the National Trust for Scotland in 1938. It was refurbished for the 1952 and just after the 2002 anniversaries, with transfer of some specimens and MSS to the Royal Scottish Museum and National Library of Scotland. The Cottage now operates as the Hugh Miller Birthplace Cottage and Museum together with Miller House, another family home, next door, with further specimens loaned by National Museums Scotland. The hitherto poorly understood fate of Miller's papers is outlined. They are important for research and as display objects. Most seem to have been lost, especially through the early death of his daughter Harriet Davidson (1839-1883) in Australia. Miller's collection illustrates some of the problems and opportunities of displaying named geological collections in museums, and the use of manuscripts and personalia with them. The exhibition strategies can be shown to respond to changing perceptions of Miller, famous in his time but much less well known latterly. There is, in retrospect, a clear long-term pattern of collaboration between museums and libraries in Edinburgh, Cromarty and elsewhere, strongly coupled to the fifty-year cycle of the anniversaries of Miller's birth.

In the context of Russо-Byzantine minor arts, hoards of the Kievan Rus’ era represent a unique group of material culture artifacts, which are being thoroughly examined by academic science — archaeology and art history. The history of museum affairs have accumulated a number of studies on individual private collections, where the hoards were presented to some extent. However, there is a demand for a comprehensive coverage of the entire complex of hoards as the result of a “collecting fever” in the Russian Empire at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries. The culture of this period, addressed to the styles of past eras, made objets d’art of Byzantium, Ancient Russia and neighboring cultures to be desirable items of collecting, which contributed to the activation of the antiquities market. When the antiquities used to be implemented into the private collectors’ milieu, certain tendencies of their existence in this milieu inevitably arose. This article makes an attempt to highlight beneficial and negative aspects of such tendencies, especially for humanitarian science and museum work. Among the personalities, such as A. S. and P. S.Uvarovs, D.Ya. Samokvasov, B.I. and V.N.Khanenko, V. V.Tarnovsky, A.A.Bobrinsky, A. V.Zvenigorodsky, M P.Botkin, P.Morgan — two groups are distinguished according to their motivations and approaches: professional archaeologists and connoisseurs of antiquities. Characteristics of structure and acquisitions of their collections in the context of archaeological excavations are given; their further history of existence and the role in the museumification of decorative and applied arts monuments are revealed. A number of problematic aspects of the collectors and antique dealers’ activity is named, such as the growth of the forgery market, the fragmentation of monuments, which used to the single complexes, as well as the issue of national values restitution.

The article deals with the problem of art forgery, its local and global dimensions, whilst also exploring the origins of this practice. The author argues that works of art have always aroused and continue arousing great interest among collectors, art admirers, and specialists in forgeries. It has been found in the research that collecting has been practiced since ancient times, in a certain way promoting the process of art forgery. The author mentions well-known and reputable world auction houses and reveals the role of some of them in trafficking forged paintings. The article emphasises that the scandals related to trading art forgery cast a dark shadow on auctions and galleries in general. Paintings have proven to be one of the most common items of antiquity and forgery. It is established in the article that the prices for the artworks of famous masters have increased from thousands to millions of dollars over the years, and that they are generally recognised as a reliable investment. The replenishment of collections with purchased works of art is always a large and lucrative business. However, not all of these masterpieces are originals. The presented research shows that this problem keeps gaining momentum and needs to be resolved on a global level. The article notes that the 20th century can be characterised by positive achievements and discoveries of humankind. However, it has engraved in history the problem of art forgery mired in scandals of a worldwide scale. The author highlights famous forgeries and falsifications as well as the most popular art forgers and paintings. The forgers were found to have skillfully used the hardships connected with the chaos and displacement of cultural property caused by the two world wars. As a result, forgery artworks appear on the auctions, where they can find their new owners. It misleads museums, collectors, and millions of art lovers. The article describes the methods, which forgers use in their work, and reveals their motivation for making fake art products. The details and ways, which allows distinguishing a counterfeit artwork from the original, are also covered in the research. The article shows how the international community invests great efforts to find originals, detect existing forgeries, and prevent the creation of new fakes. Interpol’s opening of a previously classified database of stolen works of art has proved helpful in partially blocking forged artwork distribution channels. Keywords: works of art, forgers, forgeries, art market, auction houses, galleries, museums, theft, search, Interpol.

In the second half of the 19th century, Buddhist bells from Japan began to arrive in Switzerland. The fact that these were objects listed in the so-called ethnographic collections is not surprising and the history of collecting has been a subject of postcolonial research. However, remarkably, the travel route of these bells, some of which weighed over a ton, could not be documented. Until now, the way how the bells were imported into Switzerland as unknown, and the problem of their provenance unsolved. This article argues that a global history approach provides new insights in two respects: The consideration of materiality allows a new nderstanding of the objects, while the activities of local collectors, seen from a micro-global point of view, reveal the local imprints of the global. Within this rationale, a history of individual bells in the possession of individual art lovers and museums translates into a history of scrap metal trade, allows to consider the disposal of disliked objects at their place of origin, and opens up a global framing of local history. Using global history as a concept, the historicity of the global gains visibility as we look at the intersection of materiality and the local involvement of global networks. Ultimately, as we follow the journey of the bells, reinterpreting scrap metal into art has formed a striking way in which local history assimilates the global.

Drakaea Lindley, 1840 is a genus of 10 species of geophytic orchids endemic to the South-west Australian Floristic Region. The genus is renowned for its morphological and chemical adaptations, achieving pollination by sexual deception of male thynnid wasps. The history of taxa in Drakaea has been one of dispute and confusion right to the present day. Here we provide a revision of the genus, the first made by using modern collections and field data, formalising names for undescribed taxa featured by Hoffman and Brown (1992, 1998), several of which are threatened with extinction. We describe six new species: D. andrewsiae, D. concolor, D. confluens, D. gracilis, D. isolata and D. micrantha. Experimental baiting of male wasps has helped show the specific status of some of these new taxa. Molecular phylogenetic research is needed to clarify relationships and patterns of speciation in the genus. Five of the 10 Drakaea species are legally protected under the Western Australian Wildlife Conservation Act and the Commonwealth Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, signalling the ongoing need for research and management to ensure the conservation of this unique part of Australia’s orchid heritage. D. andrewsiae has been recorded only three times from the Gnowangerup–Tunney district. Urgent surveys are needed to establish its conservation status.

AbstractThis project began with a deceptively simple question: “Were there runaway slaves in Indian Territory in the 1830 s and 40s?” The answer was complicated and relied upon the combined expertise of historians, archivists, curators, and collectors. This article describes how collaborative research, performed at the Helmerich Center for American Research at the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma, uncovered a long-neglected piece of history in Indian Territory. The collections, which contain diverse sources such as manuscripts written on parchment, archaeological artefacts, original art, and more recently, digitised documents, images, and videos, shape the way scholars answer their questions. Although scholarly research may appear to be an independent endeavour – the professor mining sources at a desk or writing alone on a computer – the reality, especially in the twenty-first century, is much different. What shows up on the page and, now, what results in a podcast, is rooted in a shared journey, beginning with an archivist or curator collecting and cataloguing materials and ending in cyberspace.

"Academia" Publishing House (1922–1937) books are an example of high publishing culture.For many years, the products of the publishing house have been the subject of close attention on the part of bibliophiles and collectors in many countries of the world. The reason for this interest is literary impeccability and excellent decoration. To reach unprecedented artistic heights became possible thanks to the work of the best Soviet professional artists. All the existing printing methods, the best printing houses, and graphic art techniques were used while creating these books. The history of the publishing house, covered in rare publications, alongside with triumphal events, victories at international book competitions, is full of dramatic and even tragic pages. It can be called the publishing house of repressed editors, authors, and books.Almost all the managers of Academia, many employees were subjected to repressions, were sentenced to capital punishment. Their names were extorted from the output of the entire book circulation; introductory articles were cut out, publications were discontinued, sometimes, entire print runs of books were destroyed. In modern libraries, copies of such "repressed" books have been miraculously preserved. That is why it is difficult to overestimate their historical and cultural value – genuine documentary witnesses of historical events of almost a century remoteness.The history of the Academia Publishing House is intertwined with Irkutsk, since the stuff included people whose fate related to the city on the Angara: the last head of the “Academia”, Yakov Davidovich Yanson, after the October revolution held leadership positions in the government in Irkutsk; the founder of the Soviet school of folklore and anthrax studies, Irkutsk professor Mark Konstantinovich Azadovsky also collaborated with the publishing house “Academia”.The article is the first to observe the questions of valuable collections formation and preservation in the Irkutsk Regional Universal Scientific Library named after I. I. Molchanov-Sibirsky (IRSUSL), the former library of the Irkutsk Pedagogical Institute and the library of the Irkutsk Regional Art Museum named after V. P. Sukatchev (IRAM). Collecting bit-by-bit book masterpieces, librarians study, popularize them at exhibitions, presentations, lectures, showing the authentic Russian book art culture.

Eleonora Mattia: Three Italian illuminated Cuttings in the Royal Library of Copenhagen Some observations on the history of collecting illuminated cuttings serve to introduce three unpublished Italian fragments that are part of a collection of illuminated fragments conserved in the Royal Danish Library. The miniatures are described from the point of view of their liturgical and art-historical content and are presented in the form of entries in a catalogue raisonné. The Master B. F., who grew up under the shadow of Leonardo de Vinci, was among those miniaturists most sought-after by collectors in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century because of his evident stylistic debts to the great painter. The beautiful miniature in Copenhagen can now be added to the other known works of this Master and is critical not only to the reconstruction of his corpus, but also for the history of collecting, as it comes from the prestigious Holford Collection. It was already correctly attributed when it entered the collection of the Royal Library; it is here inserted into the activity of the artist, a dating is proposed, and a provenance is suggested from the series of choir books in the monastery of Santi Angelo e Nicolò a Villanova Sillaro in Lombardy, which were broken up around 1799. The Danish cutting here attributed to Attavante has a specific iconography that demonstrates an originality and an independence from models followed by contemporary Florentine painting, qualities not always acknowledged to the well known miniaturist whose extensive figurative production has sometimes been considered repetitive. A third fragment is here attributed to the Pisan Master of Montepulciano Gradual I. This anonymous miniaturist is at the centre of the most recent and innovative studies of fourteenth-century Tuscan painting: his activity belongs to the diversified texture of artistic production between Florence and its nearby cities, with expressive modalities independent of the tradition of the more strictly Giottesque masters. The miniature attributed to him here is to be added to the catalogue of his works, dispersed as they are in many European and American collections.

Demidoff ’s villa San Donato near Florence, in the middle of the 19th century, was one of the most interesting phenomena of European artistic life. The richest collection, acquired by the two generations of the family and opened for the choice public at the end of the 1850s, was attractive not only for the curious tourist by also for the specialists in the history of art. This collection gives his influence for the collecting of the second half of the 19th century The total liquidation of the 1860s–1880s destroyed this ensemble. However, thanks to the sales catalogues, some detailed descriptions of the interiors of San Donato and the archive’s documents, unique pictures, it becomes possible to restore not only the list of this collection but to try to understand the taste of these collectors. At the end of the 1850s at the rooms of Villa San Donato was amassed one of the most important collections from Russian malachite. Those pieces reflected two main styles applied by European and Russian artists. One of the rooms was decorated by the pieces created in the first third of the 19th century in empire taste. The second interior, remarkable by the concentration of the malachite pieces realized in the middle 19th century was known only by a description completed by the malachite pieces in the second rococo taste. The decoration of this room was destroyed by the sales. However, the study of the descriptions of 1858 and 1864, archive documents, sale catalogues and previous research permit to reconstruct of the main elements of one of the main interiors of the Florentine villa of the Demidoff family and to talk about the very special taste of his members.

In the first half of the 19th century in literature on art the term ‘Old Masters’ was disseminated (Alte Meister, maître ancienns, etc.), this in relation to the concept of New Masters. However, contrary to the widespread view, it did not result from the name institutionalization of public museums (in Munich the name Alte Pinakothek was given in 1853, while in Dresden the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister was given its name only after 1956). Both names, however, feature in collection catalogues, books, articles, press reports, as well as tourist guides. The term ‘Old Masters’ with reference to the artists of the modern era appeared in the late 17th century among the circles of English connoisseurs, amateur experts in art (John Evelyn, 1696). Meanwhile, the Great Tradition: from Filippo Villani and Alberti to Bellori, Baldinucci, and even Winckelmann, implied the use of the category of ‘Old Masters’ (antico, vecchio) in reference to ancient: Greek-Roman artists. There existed this general conceptual opposition: old (identified with ancient) v. new (the modern era). An attempt is made to answer when this tradition was broken with, when and from what sources the concept (and subsequently the term) ‘Old Masters’ to define artists later than ancient was formed; namely the artists who are today referred to as mediaeval and modern (13th–18th c.). It was not a single moment in history, but a long intermittent process, leading to 18th- century connoisseurs and scholars who formalized early-modern collecting, antiquarian market, and museology. The discerning and naming of the category in-between ancient masters (those referred to appropriately as ‘old’) and contemporary or recent (‘new’) artists resulted from the attempts made to systemize and categorize the chronology of art history for the needs of new collector- and connoisseurship in the second half of the 16th and in the 17th century. The old continuum of history of art was disrupted by Giorgio Vasari (Vite, 1550, 1568) who created the category of ‘non-ancient old’, ‘our old masters’, or ‘old-new’ masters (vecchi e non antichi, vecchi maestri nostri, i nostri vecchi, i vecchi moderni). The intuition of this ‘in-between’ the vecchi moderni and maestri moderni can be found in some writers-connoisseurs in the early 17th (e.g. Giulio Mancini). The Vasarian category of the ‘old modern’ is most fully reflected in the compartmentalizing of history conducted by Carel van Mander (Het Schilder-Boeck, 1604), who divided painters into: 1) oude (oude antijcke), ancient, antique, 2) oude modern, namely old modern; 3) modern; very modern, living currently. The oude modern constitute a sequence of artists beginning with the Van Eyck brothers to Marten de Vosa, preceding the era of ‘the famous living Netherlandish painters’. The in-between status of ‘old modern’ was the topic of discourse among the academic circles, formulated by Jean de La Bruyère (1688; the principle of moving the caesura between antiquité and modernité), Charles Perrault (1687–1697: category of le notre siècle preceded by le siècle passé, namely the grand masters of the Renaissance), and Pellegrino Antonio Orlandi writing from the position of an academic studioso for connoisseurs and collectors (Abecedario pittorico, 1704, 1719, 1733, 1753; the antichimoderni category as distinct from the i viventi). Together with Christian von Mechel (1781, 1783) the new understanding of ‘old modernity’ enters the scholarly domain of museology and the devising of displays in royal and ducal galleries opened to the public, undergoing the division into national categories (schools) and chronological ones in history of art becoming more a science (hence the alte niederländische/deutsche Meister or Schule). While planning and describing painterly schools at the Vienna Belvedere Gallery, the learned historian and expert creates a tripartite division of history, already without any reference to antiquity, and with a meaningful shift in eras: Alte, Neuere, and lebende Meister, namely ‘Old Masters’ (14th–16th/17th c.), ‘New Masters’ (Late 17th c. and the first half of the 18th c.), and contemporary ‘living artists’. The Alte Meister ceases to define ancient artists, while at the same time the unequivocally intensifying hegemony of antique attitudes in collecting and museology leads almost to an ardent defence of the right to collect only ‘new’ masters, namely those active recently or contemporarily. It is undertaken with fervour by Ludwig Christian von Hagedorn in his correspondence with his brother (1748), reflecting the Enlightenment cult of modernité, crucial for the mental culture of pre-Revolution France, and also having impact on the German region. As much as the new terminology became well rooted in the German-speaking regions (also in terminology applied in auction catalogues in 1719–1800, and obviously in the 19th century for good) and English-speaking ones (where the term ‘Old Masters’ was also used in press in reference to the collections of the National Gallery formed in 1824), in the French circles of the 18th century the traditional division into the ‘old’, namely ancient, and ‘new’, namely modern, was maintained (e.g. Recueil d’Estampes by Pierre Crozat), and in the early 19th century, adopted were the terms used in writings in relation to the Academy Salon (from 1791 located at Louvre’s Salon Carré) which was the venue for alternating displays of old and contemporary art, this justified in view of political and nationalistic legitimization of the oeuvre of the French through the connection with the tradition of the great masters of the past (Charles-Paul Landon, Pierre-Marie Gault de Saint-Germain). As for the German-speaking regions, what played a particular role in consolidating the term: alte Meister, was the increasing Enlightenment – Romantic Medievalism as well as the cult of the Germanic past, and with it a revaluation of old-German painting: altdeutsch. The revision of old-German art in Weimar and Dresden, particularly within the Kunstfreunde circles, took place: from the category of barbarism and Gothic ineptitude, to the apology of the Teutonic spirit and true religiousness of the German Middle Ages (partic. Johann Gottlob von Quandt, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe). In this respect what actually had an impact was the traditional terminology backup formed in the Renaissance Humanist Germanics (ethnogenetic studies in ancient Germanic peoples, their customs, and language), which introduced the understanding of ancient times different from classical-ancient or Biblical-Christian into German historiography, and prepared grounds for the altdeutsche Geschichte and altdeutsche Kunst/Meister concepts. A different source area must have been provided by the Reformation and its iconoclasm, as well as the reaction to it, both on the Catholic, post-Tridentine side, and moderate Lutheran: in the form of paintings, often regarded by the people as ‘holy’ and ‘miraculous’; these were frequently ancient presentations, either Italo-Byzantine icons or works respected for their old age. Their ‘antiquity’ value raised by their defenders as symbols of the precedence of Christian cult at a given place contributed to the development of the concept of ‘ancient’ and ‘old’ painters in the 17th–18th century.

В настоящей статье впервые рассматривается история собирания и изучения сказительской традиции Верхоянья со времён известного фольклориста И. А. Худякова до настоящего времени. Актуальность исследования заключается в том значении, которое имеют сохранение, популяризация и распространение эпических традиций народов Российской Федерации в сохранении многообразия культур народов, населяющих нашу страну, для будущих поколений.Цель исследования: обобщить и проанализировать результаты кропотливой собирательской работы начиная с И. А. Худякова до сегодняшнего дня, как отдельных фольклористов, так и фольклорных экспедиций в Верхоянский улус Республики Саха (Якутия). В процессе исследования для достижения поставленной цели решалась задача выявления вклада фольклористов, исследовавших устное народное творчество данного региона, в изучение локальной эпической традиции.Изучены материалы, собранные фольклористами с XIX в. по настоящее время, в т. ч. авторами статьи, и отложенные в архивах Института гуманитарных исследований и проблем малочисленных народов Севера СО РАН и Национальном архиве Республики Саха (Якутия), в личных архивах авторов статьи, включая материалы, записанные от информантов – жителей Верхоянского улуса, а также опубликованные тексты олонхо верхоянских сказителей. В исследовании использовались как теоретические методы (изучение архивных материалов, научной литературы), методы сравнения и обобщения, так и методы полевых исследований.В результате исследования установлено, что если И. А. Худяков собирал и изучал верхоянский фольклор в стационарных условиях, то последующие фольклористы советского периода: А. А. Саввин, В. В. Илларионов, П. Н. Дмитриев, С. Д. Мухоплева – собирали богатейший фольклорный материал в полевых условиях. В статье особо отмечается роль собирателей-энтузиастов: Т. Т. Данилова, записавшего олонхо М. Н. Горохова «Кыыдааннаах Кыыс Богатырка», Е. И. Бурцевой, записавшей олонхо с привлечением технических средств, И. И. Стручковой, М. А. Стручковой, материалы которых использованы в изучении сказительской традиции верхоянских олонхосутов. Результаты проведённого анализа и научного обобщения, предпринятых в настоящей статье, будут подспорьем для дальнейшего научного исследования локальной эпической традиции олонхосутов. This article is the first to review the history of collecting and studying the storytelling tradition of Verkhoyansk from the times of the famous folklorist I. A. Khudyakov to the present.The relevance of the study lies in the importance of the preservation, popularization and distribution of the epic traditions of the peoples of the Russian Federation in preserving the diversity of cultures of the peoples inhabiting our country for future generations.Objective: to summarize and analyze the results of painstaking collecting work from I. A. Khudyakov to the present day, both individual folklorists and folklore expeditions to the Verkhoyansky District, Sakha Republic (Yakutia). In the process of research to achieve the goal, the task of identifying the contribution of folklorists, who studied the oral folk art of the region, to the study of the local epic tradition was solved.The materials collected by folklorists from the 19th century to the present, including the authors of the article, and deposited in the archives of the Institute of Humanitarian Research and Problems of Indigenous Peoples of the North, SB RAS and the National Archive of the Sakha Republic (Yakutia), in the personal archives of the authors recorded from informants – residents of the Verkhoyansk ulus, as well as the published texts of Olonkho by Verkhoyansk narrators. The study used both theoretical methods (the study of archival materials, scientific literature), methods of comparison and generalization, and methods of field research.As a result of the study, it was established that while I. A. Khudyakov collected and studied Verkhoyansk folklore in stationary conditions, subsequent folklorists of the Soviet period – A. A. Savvin, V. V. Illarionov, P. N. Dmitriev, S. D. Mukhopleva – collected the richest folklore material in the field. The article emphasizes the role of collectors-enthusiasts: T. T. Danilov, who recorded M. N. Gorokhov’s olonkho “Kyydaannaakh Kyys Bogatyr”, E. I. Burtseva, who recorded the olonkho with technical tools, I. I. Struchkova, M. A Struchkova, the materials of which are used in the study of the storytelling tradition of the Verkhoyansk Olonkho-narrators. The results of the analysis and academic generalization undertaken in this article will help to further academic research on the local epic tradition of Olonkho-narrators.

AbstractA century ago the Rijksprentenkabinet in Amsterdam acquired a 19th-century album containing 56 rapid sketches in black chalk after 17th-century, mostly Dutch paintings (Note 1). The sketches, which are numberd, have the names of the painters wrillen on them in the artist's own hand. They were first published in 1895 (Note 2) by E. W. Moes, who concluded that they were by a Delft artist, and C. Hofstede de Groot, who convincingly attributed them to Leonaert Bramer (1596-1674) and identified two of the paintings in question. Since then various other paintings have been identified (Notes 5, 7, 8, 11 and 12), notably by A. Blankert, who has made his findings available for the present publication, and other drawings belonging to the series have been found, Frits Lugt leading the way here (Notes 9 and 10). The present study, the first to be undertaken in depth since 1895, has brought to light three more sketches after paintings by Bramer himself (cat. nos.9-11) and one probably after Wouwerman (cat. no.65), while seven more paintings have been identified and one of the sketches without a name has proved to be after a painting by Antonio Maria Viani. Two lists of the sketches so far found are given here: that of State I reproduces the original order, that of State II gives the artists in alphabetical order as they appear in the catalogue published here. These sketches are of exceptional documentary value, since they have not only given us the names of some previously unknown painters, such as M. de Berch, J. Garbaal, P. Monincx and A. Pick, but they have also revealed unexpected aspects of some well-known ones, e.g. a still life by P. van Groenewegen, a Dutch landscape by J.B. Weenix and a genre piece of a very Utrecht character by L. de Jongh. Moreover, the sketches afford a fine glimpse of collecting in Holland in the 17th century, a subject otherwise known uirtually only from non-visual documents. On the back of one of the drawings (cat. no.6) appears a list of the owners of the pictures sketched (Fig. I), possibly written by Bramer himself. This is reproduced here in an amplified version of Moes' transcription, with one completely new name yielded by the present study. The styles given in the list suggest that the men concerned appear in it in order of their social standing. The first, Simon Graswinckel (c.1611-71), was a member of a wealthy Delft family of brewers and regents. He owned a great deal of property in and around Delft, but is reported by his brothers-in-law to have spent his time in gaming-houses and taverns (Note 30). His will of 1663 is known, but no paintings are mentioned in it. The second man on the list was probably a Van Beresteijn, another family from the wealthy upper echelons of Delft society. His precise identity came to light in a roundabout way via the inventory of 28 February 1652 of Adriaen van Vredenburg, in which are listed a number of paintings that were very probably sketched by Bramer (Note 32), notably one of Jezebel, this mention and Bramer's sketch being virtually unique indications of this subject in Dutch 17th-century painting. Vredenburg does not appear in the list of owners of the paintings, but on his death his property went to his stepdaughter, whose guardian he had been and who married Theodorus van Beresteijn in November 1652. Antonie van Bronchorst is known only from the commission he gave Bramer in 1653 to painl frescoes in his house (Note 34), while Capitein van der Bon..., Nicolaas van der Werch and Johan Persijn have not yet been traced in the Delft archives. Willem de Langue (1599-1666), on the other hand, was a lawyer and a connoisseur of paintings unparalleled in Delft in the mid 17th century (Note 36). He himself made the inventories of the paintings in important estates and he numbered many artists among his clientele (Note 37). Portraits of him and his wife by Van Vliet are known (Note 38), while he also appears as an officer in a militia piece of 1648 by Jacob Willemsz Delff (Fig. 2). Abraham de Cooge (before 1600-after 1680) was the most versatile person in the list, being an engraver, painter, dealer in tulip bulbs, organs and paintings and pottery manufacturer (Note 39). He was registered in the Guild of St. Luke in Delft in 1632 and two paintings by him are known (Note 40). In 1646 Leonaerl Bramer made illustrations to the picaresque novel Lazarilo de Tormes for him (Note 17). In the 1650's De Cooge was increasingly involved in art-dealing and that on no small scale. He also had representatives in Antwerp, so was probably among the biggest art-dealers in the Northern Netherlands. Adam Pick (c. 1622-before 1666) enrolled in the Guild of St. Luke in Delft in 1642 (Note 43) and was active in the town up to the early 1650's as a painter of landscapes, genre pieces and still lifes (Fig.3) and also as the keeper of the Toelast ( Wine Cask) inn. He probably moved to Leiden, where he is mentioned in 1654 as a vintner, in 1653, perhaps as a consequence of the death of his first wife in 1652, f or he certainly sold the inn that year. The inventory of their joint property drawn up in 1653 includes a list of paintings, which tally with nos.8(?) -98 in the State I list. Only one painting by Pick is known (Fig.3), plus the sketch by Bramer after another (cat. no.44). Reinier Jansz Vermeer (1591-1652, Note 46), the father of Johannes, started out as a silk weaver, but appears in 1629 as an innkeeper and in 1631 was registered in the Guild of St. Luke in Delft as an art-dealer. From then on he came into frequent contact with local painters, Bramer included, but his dealing was probably only a sideline of his innkeeping. He died in October 1652. The last owner on the list is Bramer himself, who returned to Delft in 1628 after a lengthy period in France and Italy (1614-27, Note 49). He played a leading part in the Guild of St. Luke and was among the most successful painters in Delft around the middle of the 17th century. Later in life, however, he was often in financial difficulties (Note 50). He was one of the very few Dutch fresco painters (Note 51), as well as a painter of history and genre pieces and a prolific draughtsman and illustrator (Note 52), while just one document provides evidence of his dealing in paintirtgs (Note 54). The presence of works by Bramer himself among the sketches seems to rule out the theory that he made them as an aide mémoire for his own use (Note 15), while their very rapid character makes it unlikely that they were produced for one of the owners as an art-object. It also seems highly improbable that the collectors/owners would have wanted their collections of paintings sketched together in one book. The most acceptable suggestion appears to be that they were made in connection with a forthcoming sale of pictures, particularly as three of the owners listed were involved in art-dealing, while in the cases of Vermeer, Pick and Van Beresteijn there was every reason for paintings from their collections being sold around the end of 1652 or beginning of 1653: Vermeer's death left his family in dire financial straits, Pick will probably have sold his pictures (as he did his inn) before moving to Leiden and Van Beresteijn will probably have wanted to realize some money on his wife's inheritance. Thus the dates of Vermeer's burial in October 1652 and Pick's inventory of March 1653 would seem to provide crucial clues to the dating of the sketches, which were probably made in rapid succession, to judge from the unity of style, despite the great diversity of the models, and the straightforward consecutive numbering. Presumably the intention was to bring these pictures from Delft collections together for a sale (Note 18) and Bramer was commissioned to make sketches in advance (or even to make a certain selection, Note 19) possibly to give an idea of what was on offer to collectors or dealers elsewhere (which might explain the 'inking in' of the painters' names originally written in chalk on five of the drawings, cat. nos. 17, 35, 36, 47 and 64). Bramer made such chalk inscriptions on ten of the drawings (Note 20), probably while sketching them. Afterwards he inscribed and numbered all of them in ink (Note 5). Notes in another 17th-century hand appear on cat. nos.22 and 24. The sheets may all have been of the same size originally, but have since been cut down, often wholly or partly along the framing lines around the sketch. This may well have been done by Bramer himsef or the dealer he made them for. Just over half of them remained together and were stuck into the present album in the 19th century. There are no portraits among the sketches and only two stll lifes and two marine paintings, but eleven Italianate landscapes and 22 history paintings. Thus the subjects differ somewhat from the categories arrived at by Montiasfor mid 17th-century Delft from his study of inventories (Note 56). The preference for history pieces is probably to be explained by the high social standing of the owners. The majority of the pictures were very modern for that time and of the 41 artists, 28 were still alive in 1652-3 and eight of them were only 35 or younger. Bramer's material contradicts Montlas' conclusion that Delft collectors showed a preference for local painters (Note 58), whose work amounted to 40-50% of that listed in the inventories. Of Bramer's 41 painters, only thirteen were from Delft (Note 59) and only five are found in Montias' list of the most common painters in Delft inventories. Thus the pictures sketched by Bramer fall outside the 'normal Delft pattern' and evince a less provincial taste. However, the collectors were still not among the leading figures of their day in this field by comparison with, for example, Boudewijn de Man of Delft (Note 62), whose collection included works by Goltzius, Bloemaert, Rubens, Rembrandt and Ter Brugghen in 1644. The pictures sketched by Bramer were presumably to be brought together for public auction and the sketches may very probably have been made with an eye to the sale catalogue. While sale catalogues are known in the second half of the 17th century, they only relate to very important collections, which makes these sketches very unusual as a documentation of a sale of pictures from average well-to-do collectors and dealers. The collection of sketches as such certainly has no parallel at this period (Note 64).

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IntroductionThe rekindling popularity of the vinyl record and record collecting provide a counternarrative to the ideals of technological progress and supersession, signalling the paradoxical return of a physical music format in the digital realm where “the fetish of newness is at its most aggressive” (Tischleder and Wasserman 7). In this way, the vinyl record provides a disruptive lens through which to question media history as “a history of obsolescence, where new media displace and redefine older media” and explore how “obsolescence resists becoming obsolete” (Tischleder and Wasserman 2). Magaudda (29) argues that the dematerialisation of music media has reconfigured the role of materiality in media practices and has seen physical formats such as the vinyl record “bite back” as mediators of distinct listening practices and unique material relationships to music. Against the background of on-demand streaming services and retro nostalgia in the digital age (Hogarty), record collecting may be dismissed as a resistant and obsolete collecting practice. However, as this article will explore, record collecting can be characterised as a highly social practice, providing a means to communicate identity and taste, maintain a sense of the past, and orient the social life and personal history of the collector. This article reports on the results of ethnographic research investigating the record collections of some young millennial music fans to locate the position and significance of vinyl records in their social lives as a legacy media format. To do this, I examine three key capacities of vinyl record collections in evoking autobiographical memories, maintaining personal histories and anchoring a sense of the past. The significance of personal record collections and collecting practices was investigated in a series of semi-structured in-depth interviews with a group of self-identified record collectors. The sentiments of the collector in describing their collecting can be found to reveal their acquisitions as transactions within the spheres of commodity culture and the gift economy, articulating the renewed appeal of vinyl records in the digital age. This perspective of the social meanings and media practices surrounding vinyl records in the digital age highlight the formats significance in understanding the complex trajectories of media history. Vinyl RecordsSucceeding the shellac gramophone record in the 1948, the vinyl record was the dominant format for commercial music distribution until it was largely replaced by the Compact Disc and the audio cassette in the 1980s and 1990s (Osbourne 81). Vinyl sales remained low until 2007 (Richter), when the withering sales of cassette singles and the rising popularity of alternative guitar music saw renewed interest in the seven-inch vinyl record (Osbourne 140). The popularity of both seven-inch and twelve-inch vinyl records have continued to rise into the 2010s, spurred on by industry and artist endorsements on Record Store Day (Harvey) and the return of in-house vinyl production by major labels (Ellis-Petersen). In Australia, vinyl sales generated $15.1 million dollars in 2016, showing 75% growth over the previous year (Australian Recording Industry Association). It is in this way that the resurgent trajectory of vinyl records has come to be understood as an allegorical case for broader debates around media materiality in the digital age. Vinyl records can be regarded as unique and highly collectable based on their material affordances. The aesthetic appeal of large album cover art has been described as a crucial component to the enduring popularity and resurgence of the format (Bartmanski and Woodward 123) and this is often reflected in the display of a collection within domestic spaces, enabling the musical taste of the collector to be observed and admired by others (Giles, Pietrykowski, and Clark 436). Further, the materiality of vinyl records necessitates a distinctive set of actions for music playback, engaging the listener physically in a different way to digital interfaces (Bartmanski and Woodward 37). In their analysis of the resurgent cultural and social value of vinyl records, Bartmanski and Woodward expand on the importance of materiality and ownership of vinyl records for collectors in serving socially communicative and identity affirming processes, affording “opportunities to revisit and remember one’s past …, such opportunities are also useful for understanding and defining self as having a biography of cultural consumption or tastes” (107). The unique material affordances differentiate vinyl records from other music media formats and have cemented their position as “the collectable format” (Shuker 57, emphasis in original). Marshall expands on this notion, writing that “the greater materiality – and fragility – of the vinyl album allows its history to be inscribed onto the material object – more so than with a CD, and much more so than with a digital file” (67). It is through such material affordances that vinyl records communicate their own histories and those of the collector.The unique material biographies of vinyl records are crucial in understanding how record collections potentially afford the collector a sense of the past. Material traces such as the wear and tear of the album cover, the marks of a previous owner or artist’s signatures obtained on its surface chronicle the journey of a record as it passes through stages of commodification and circulation before finally entering the collector’s possession. It is the physical biography of a vinyl album that differentiates it from other identical copies in the eyes of the collector, reflecting the distinctive “aura” (Benjamin, The Work of Art 220) of the individual object. Physically imbued with history and “social life” (Appadurai 3), vinyl records can materialise and reflect the personal history of the collector within the collection. These descriptions reveal the renewed position of the vinyl record as a uniquely collectable media format in the digital age, providing a framework to explore the significance of the format in the social lives of young millennial record collectors. Record CollectingIn the seminal essay on book collecting Unpacking My Library, Walter Benjamin describes the relationship that forms between the items of a collection and the owner. He explains the process in which objects enter the collection as the infusion of object with the biography of the collector, allowing the collector to “live in them” (Benjamin 67). There are few domains in which the significance of this relationship is more pronounced than in characterising the music collector and their relationship with their collection. Popular music represents a complex cultural form closely connected to concepts of identity, belonging, affect, personal, and cultural memory (Bennet and Rogers 37). Characterised as a “critical bedrock in everyday life”, music and its many mediatised modalities can be seen to shape everyday “sociocultural sensibilities …, influencing in fundamental ways how individuals understand themselves as cultural beings over time” (Bennet and Rogers 38). The personal record collection remains one of the most popular and well-established forms of musical collection. Moreover, the vinyl record maintains an enduring popularity in the digital age at the centre of specific musical cultures and as a repository of personal and cultural history.Roy Shuker’s discussion of the contemporary record collector provides a valuable insight into the identity founding capabilities of record collecting as a social practice (331). Shuker orients his findings against popularised notions of the record collector represented in Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity; male; obsessive and socially incompetent, before challenging this stereotype in exploring the connection between the social practice of record collecting and a retrospective sense of self and the past (311). In this way, a record collection may be appraised as an “attempt to preserve both the past and memories of the past” (Montano 2). Significantly, Shuker found that some collectors emphasised the social nature of their collecting practice, citing collecting as the foundation of close social relationships with friends and family (326). It is through these social dimensions of record collecting practice that the reconfigured position of vinyl records can be understood as an ongoing project of identity, taste and personal history. Gift Economy and Commodity CultureEntry into the collection is a pivotal transition in the biography of an object and a “privileged moment” in the life of a collector (Marshall 67). For the record collector, new and re-pressed records lining the shelves of record stores, curated collections for sale or trade at record fairs, vast online marketplaces, and divested selections of tip-shops and garage sales represent troves of opportunity and potential for collectors to explore musical genres, uncover rare or unique records and to increase their own musical scholarship. Conversely, receiving a record as a gift or inheriting a collection of records from a family member represents a mode of acquisition which is less discussed and concerns a very different set of motivations and associations for the collector. These different circumstances of acquisition can be broadly categorised as transactions within the circuits of commodity culture and social actions within the gift economy and play a pivotal role in the imbuing of collection objects with the personal history of the collector. Lewis Hyde demarcates the boundaries between these the two systems of merit, finding “A commodity has value … A gift has worth” (78). In furthering this distinction, Hyde describes transactions within commodity culture as expressions of individuality and identity, enabling upwards mobility and changes to identity, while the gift economy concerns the strengthening of social ties, reaffirming cultural traditions and may reflect sentiments of nostalgia (68). In an age of digital music, the physicality of records enables them to be move through the gift economy in ways in which digital files cannot. While digital files may be gifted in a token sense via gift cards or transferred electronically, they struggle to communicate “worth” to the receiver in the same way as a tangible gift (Harvey et al.). It is in this sense that the “bonding power” of records which enter the collection as a gift can be understood from the more detached transactions within commodity culture (Hyde 86).As a transaction within the channels of commodity culture, a vinyl record may be utilised as a symbolic object to communicate musical taste, fandom and the cultural expertise of the collector which may not be “adequately signified socially merely by storage of digital files and players” (Bartmanski and Woodward 107). This signifying ability is afforded by the considerable material presence of the vinyl record cover and the collection within domestic spaces. In addition to social display, one interviewee explained how their collection invites a historical perspective of their own evolving musical tastes:I’ll keep buying more records that I like, and even if I don’t like the band later I’ll keep the vinyl anyway because at some point I did like them. It’s like a chronological order of stuff that I listen to. I’ll always go back to it as a personal history. I’ve always loved music so having that there gives me a perspective what I’ve been into. (Eddie, 21)Culture and taste are revealed as dimensions of the self through the collection, revealing a trajectory of continuity and change over time (Bartmanski and Woodward 107). As a materialisation of “personal history”, the record collection may be described as a “technology of the self” in which music may be experienced in association with “the past” and is therefore part of “producing oneself as a coherent being over time” and a “cuing in how to proceed” into the future. (DeNora 66). In addition to this retrospective view of personal musical development, Eddie also revealed how interpersonal connections come to become associated with records in his collections through the gift economy:I have a couple of records that friends have bought for me, and that in itself I find is really nice – its someone that cares that you are into music and knows some bands that I respect and that I am into. Often, we will chuck it on and listen together. (Eddie 21)Bundled up in the relationship between musical taste and the collection, records received as gifts from friends demonstrate the nurturing or affirmation of social bonds which may be then further solidified through shared listening experience (Brown and Sellen 37). Here, the sentimental value of the gift is privileged over its monetary value, revealing its “worth” within the gift economy (Hyde 78). These social connections embedded within record collections and can be understood further through the inheritance of a collection as it is passed down by familial generations.Material Memory: Inheritance and LossIf ownership can be characterised as “the most intimate relationship one can have to objects”, then the process of inheriting a collection marks an important moment of divestment and transfer of ownership and responsibility from the collector to another (Benjamin, Unpacking 67). One interviewee who inherited his late father’s record collection highlighted the powerful bond between object and collector, describing the collection as a “part” of his father that remains:A lot of it my dad really cherished it y’know? I feel like he’s gone, if this goes, it’s like another part of him that’s gone forever. And no one likes to think of death and what happens after you’re gone and forgotten – but the vinyl lives on, what you don’t take with you when you die is everything, and that is what stays. (Simon 22)Records inherited from a deceased family member occupy an eminent position within the collection as items infused with the social life, bearing the material traces of past ownership. Moreover, collectors may forge a sense of permanence as the collection exists beyond their own lifetime (Marshall 65). Importantly, the collection maintains a connection between the interviewee, their late father, and a sense of the past as a form of memorial. In this way, the economic value of the collection gives way to its priceless sentimental and memorial worth for the interviewee, situating the inheritance of the collection clearly within the realm of the gift economy.The worth and value of record collections as projects of identity and signifiers of the past can be further understood when interviewees were asked to consider the loss of their collections. One interviewee remarked on the loss of a collection in terms of invested time, effort and embedded sentimental worth:I’d be devastated, it’s a killer – I don’t know how to say it. The music itself isn’t gone because you can get that elsewhere, but you just lose something that you’ve put so much time into. You’ve lost the physicality. And if there is something with heritage or sentimental value around a particular record then they are gone as well. It’s like any other sentimental item. (Dominic, 23)The investment of time in curating and pursuing additions to the collection is a key part of the satisfaction associated with collecting. It is one of the features which has come to differentiate record collecting as a marker of music fandom and expertise in a digital age of instantaneous gratification and access, facilitated by streaming. Interestingly, the interviewee’s comment about the insignificant loss of “the music itself” resembles one of Benjamin’s original claims around collecting as a relationship between collector and object based not in functional value, but on a love for them as “the scene, the stage, of their fate” (Unpacking 62). Here, the value of the record collection in signifying musical fandom and identity is differentiated from sentimental worth, clearly highlighting the unique and diverse appeal of vinyl records as a collectable object in the digital age.Wax SouvenirsBeyond socially significant and identity affirming capacities of vinyl records, records may also serve as a memorial cue, conjuring specific episodic memories from the life narrative of the collector. One interviewee recited an encounter with a favourite band, prompted by a record cover adorned by signatures:Interviewee: Yeah, the signed one is my favourite to look at. Aesthetically pleasing. It holds more value in my subjective categorisation. More sentimental value. I met the people that produced it and I got them to sign it for me.Interviewer: Does it remind you of that time?Interviewee: Yeah definitely, I’m hell bummed I didn’t get Kevin Parker to sign it! He’s the only one missing from the Frond album which he played drums on and he wasn’t at the rehearsal where the others were. (Elliot, 23)The record sleeve and signatures serve as indexical verification of the experience for the collector and contribute both to the objects unique “aura” (Benjamin, The Work of Art 220), and the collector’s subjective evaluation of its sentimental ‘worth’. This use of records as memorial cues was common for a many of the collectors interviewed, with one interviewee purchasing a specific record as a memento or souvenir with the intention of later recollection: Interviewee: I didn’t buy this to listen to. I know I said that I buy vinyl to listen to, but this one was more to support them and to have a cool memento, because they are cool guys and I got to open their launch show.Interviewer: Does it remind you of anything more specifically about that time?Interviewee: It takes me back to the weeks leading up to the release, listening to the awful Spotify master, playing the release gig itself. I feel like my collection is something that I'm going to keep for a long time - I can see myself looking back in 5-10 years and having a chuckle. (Simon, 22)These accounts resonate with the retrospective and evocative qualities of the collection as described by Benjamin, observing the way in which collectors “look into the object” and see connections to “moments and experiences in their life” (Unpacking 62). In this sense, vinyl records may serve an evidentiary function for the collector in a similar fashion to a souvenir, inviting reflection on past experiences from the owner and providing material proof of the experience when recounting to others.Conclusion This artcile has explored not only the resurgent position of vinyl records as a legacy music format, but the ways in which record collections can serve as sites of identity, memory and personal history. The role of materiality in media practices has been significantly transformed in the wake of cloud-based streaming services and has seen the vinyl record regarded as a highly collectable and unique physical media format in the digital age, capable of orienting the identities and social lives of music collectors. The descriptions gathered from interviews with millennial collectors reveal the intimate relationship between collector and collection, characterised by Benjamin (Unpacking 59), enabling the collection to materialise and reflect the personal history of the collector. As transactions within the gift economy, interviewees articulated the sentimental worth of their collections in affirming social bonds and familial connections. Moreover, interviewees explained how the patina of records within their collections reflect unique ‘social life’ (Appadurai 3) and serve as memorial cues for specific episodic memories. In this way, the enduring vinyl record is illustrative of the ways in which media history cannot be characterised as a simple trajectory of technological supersession and obsolescence, but as a complex system of evolution and redefinition of media practices, materiality and social meanings.ReferencesAppadurai, Arjun. The Social Life of Things. 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