Let’s ReCollect
With Leslie Ramos, Founding Director of ArtEater
PatronageDAO is diving into the fascinating world of collecting, and what it means to be a collector today. Behind every great collection in the world is a collector’s vision — and every great collector had to start somewhere! Most of us, usually as kids, had something that obsessed us — something we had to have — maybe it was baseball cards, maybe it was a rock from every place we visited, the latest football kit for your favourite team, or ticket stubs, autographed programs, matchboxes… Many of us still feel compelled to own and collect certain things, and a few of us might go on to make it a life-long pursuit…. Likewise, most of us have been to a museum at some point and seen some amazing things gathered in one place — just to be marvelled at…
So our mini-series Q&A, Let’s ReCollect will invite collectors, art-lovers and art world professionals to share their memories and musings on unforgettable collections, how they got started with their own collecting, and the top three pieces they would love to own (or perhaps already do!). Answers will be posted on our social media for all to enjoy!
Welcome to Episode 8 of Let’s ReCollect with, Leslie Ramos, Founding Director of ArtEater
Hi Leslie, we’d love you to ReCollect what got you started…
What’s your earliest memory of collecting?
Not sure it was the earliest but the earliest poignant one was learning about the renaissance collections and wunderkammers. I found the compulsion for the possession of art and strange objects rather fascinating and hard to resist.
What was your first experience of a collection?
I grew up seeing art in my own home and my friends’ parents’ homes, but never thinking I was in front of collections. I guess the first realisation must have been seeing Peggy Guggenheim’s collection in Venice as a teen and understanding the love and passion of collecting full time.
How did that lead onto what it is you collect now?
I think every collecting journey is different and personal. I have a few more or less objective rules I try to follow: 1) I only buy what I can afford, which so far is mostly work by emerging artists, recent art school graduates and sometimes mid-career ones. 2) I need to be madly in love with a work of art, this means to obsess over it for a few days/weeks/months. I want to be sure I will enjoy living with it. 3) Where possible, I make an effort to meet the artist. Visiting an artist’s studio is one of the best parts of collecting, so I try to do it whenever the artist is happy to have me and time and geography permit.
What is your favourite thing about collecting?
Some like the chase, some love overpaying or finding a bargain, others live for the pure act of possession of a work of art. To me, it’s a hybrid between being able to look at a work at home every day (I don’t think I’d ever keep a storage) and developing a relationship with the artist. But that feeling of falling in love with a work of art and not be able to think about anything else, that’s very special, and perhaps unlike romantic love, I feel that I can fall in love with an artwork as many times as I want in this lifetime (budget permitting!)
If you could own any 3 works of art, what would they be?
Anything by Edmund de Waal
A watercolour by Hilma Af Klint
A large abstract work by Carmen Herrera
Bonus: lately I’ve been obsessing over Diego Giacometti’s furniture.
If you could spend a night in any museum, which would it be and what would you do?
This is a tough one. I’d say either the Wallace collection, and have a night of Aperol spritzes in their Venetian Galleries. Or the Vatican Museums, where I’d spend every minute going back and forth between the Raphael Rooms and the Sistine Chapel!
