Why collect art?
During my visit last Sunday, I noticed this question displayed in a gallery at the Baker Museum in Naples, Florida. The museum had previously posed the inquiry to local collectors as part of its Naples Collects 2022-23 project. Based on responses received, the museum claimed it is “clear that the answers to this question are wildly varied.” Here are the answers the museum highlighted:
To support emerging artists
To evoke the collector’s emotion
To help the collector reflect on his life experiences
To support marginalized or underrecognized artists
Are these answers “wildly varied?”
In one respect, they differ from each other. The first and fourth are concerned with supporting the interests of artists, while the second and third are about the collector’s interests. But all four are similar in another respect: they treat art collection as instrumentally valuable. (The second and third also seem to treat art itself as instrumentally valuable.) On this point, they are predictably unvaried. The claims that art and its collection are intrinsically valuable were absent from the list of answers.
I don’t deny that fine art can be useful or that there are practical reasons for collecting it. Nevertheless, arguably, fine art has intrinsic value, and it is justifiable to collect it for its own sake.
What passess for "intrinsically valuable?"
I am somewhat shocked that you consider evoking emotion as instrumentally valuable.