Hoarders or collectors? Our frightened society has forgotten the difference

New York art show The Keeper celebrates our poetic obsession with objects, but how many of us simply surround ourselves with familiar, reassuring rubbish?

The US is a nation of compulsive collectors – at least if responses to an exhibition at New York City’s New Museum are anything to go by. The Keeper is a collection of collections, a survey of the collecting passion in art and beyond that finds room for everything from a menagerie of tiny whittled animals made by Levi Fisher Ames of Wisconsin to Vladimir Nabokov’s collection of butterflies in three floors of stuff. All of which begs the question: what is the difference between artful collecting and mad hoarding? Or are they the same thing?

Just as intriguing are the collecting confessions of New York Times readers who replied to the paper’s invitation to respond to the show. It turns out they collect everything from “vintage photos of men in rows” (pictures of lines of men, that is – not images of men quarrelling), to a woman who keeps the contents of her vacuum cleaner, to people who lovingly curate novelty pens or coloured paperclips.

Related: Renting hell in New York City: how my hoarder landlady ruined my life

Related: Robert Rauschenberg: love and loss in America

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