Werner Muensterberger

Pictures, Patents, Monkeys, And More…On Collecting Werner Muensterberger

Including such artists as Janine Antoni, Willie Coles, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Christian Marclay, Alan Rath, Jason Rhoades, Kay Rosen, Jessica Stockholder, and Lisa Yuskavage, among many others, Pictures, Patents, Monkeys, and More... On Collecting examines the collecting impulse in its various manifestations, raising fundamental questions about why we collect and whether it matters what we collect. Surprising and eccentric, this publication features three utterly different collections: Pictures(and other contemporary art objects) from the renowned Robert Shiffler Foundation in Ohio; the stunningly beautiful Patents,a selection of the Smithsonian's collection of patent models submitted to the US Patent Office in the 19th century; and finally Monkeys, from a private, New York-based collection of approximately 1,600 sock monkeys toys. Running the gamut from high art to the unmapped inspirations hidden in the dregs of American culture, Pictures, Patents, Monkeys, and More... On Collecting draws on such diverse talents as Ingrid Schaffner--adjunct curator at ICA Philadelphia--and artist Arne Svenson, whose photographs of the sock monkeys combine the haunting and the beautiful.