Is one ever too old to collect?

I reject the de-acquisitioning urge afflicting many of my peers

Rick Sharp with his 1784 bust of Benjamin Franklin

I really ought to buy some art, I told myself recently. I can’t recall what prompted the thought. Perhaps I was looking for light amid the darkness. I remember when my grandfather, our family’s pater familias, died unexpectedly half a century ago. He and my grandmother had a lovely art collection and it offered solace and beauty in the days after his passing.

It’s a long time since I bought a painting. In fact, I don’t know where I’d hang it if I did. The walls are already filled with art. But that wasn’t the thought that followed apace from my desire to own something new and exciting. It was this: having just observed my seventy-second birthday am I too old to collect? I have friends of similar age that are passionately, maniacally even, de-acquisitioning. That’s a fancy word for selling stuff, giving it away, taking it to the Goodwill or tossing it in the trash.

They seem to attach virtue to this task. They’re making life easier for their descendants once they’re gone. You enter the world naked and free of possessions and leave it the same way. So all you’re really doing is acknowledging the state of nature and doing whatever you can to smooth the journey. It’s sort of like packing wisely for vacation if you don’t want to check your luggage.

Hogwash, I say, though in more piquant language. I’m completely comfortable and conscience-free about leaving my children a tsunami’s worth of things — including copies of almost every story I ever wrote, loitering in file cabinets in our basement — for them to keep or dispose of as they see fit. I’m not presumptuous enough to suggest that the contents of those folders provides a thumbnail sketch of publishing in the golden age of print journalism. I’m not proud of the entirety of my modest oeuvre — a couple of Cosmo pieces come to mind — but a New York magazine cover is pretty cool. Plus, I have correspondence with a few fancy and famous people from an age when people wrote cards and letters. And hard copies of emails, too.

I’m frankly grateful that my parents never threw anything away, either. Once a close relative is gone, you’re occasionally stumped by the realization, the hard stop, that there’s nobody left to answer your questions about the past. I suspect I run into that roadblock less than most because both my parents were thoughtful enough to leave so much behind.

Yet, I wanted a second opinion about what some of my peers might regard as my unsociable behavior so I sought an audience with a gentleman several years older than me. From what I could tell Rick Sharp, a lawyer and philanthropist, suffers no bouts of conscience about continuing to collect. Hell, he recently bought a collector’s bible, The Magazine Antiques — not the latest issue but the whole darn publication. As you may be able to guess I was looking less for second-guessing than validation and Rick seemed like the place to find it.

Also, I have an unproven and perhaps unprovable theory that collectors share a common gene. Some people simply have the atavistic urge to gather and possess interesting objects that were previously scattered. The act is a source of pleasure and comfort. Others don’t have it at all. In a way, I admire them. As I may have previously mentioned, you enter and leave the world unencumbered. Theirs may be a more authentic state.

On the other hand, what can be more authentic than being in the moment? And immersing yourself in collecting and appreciating your collections on a daily basis is one expedient way of finding yourself in that state of grace. “The hunt is everything,” Rick told me.

I only knew him in passing but we reconnected at a conversation that Antiques sponsored in May about collecting. It was held at Hudson, NY’s Stair Galleries, an auction house. I knew from previous experience that visiting the home of a serious collector can be a risky endeavor. I’m reminded of that Outer Limits sixties TV show episode where it takes so long for prisoners to escape a house that when they finally succeed they’re so old they turn to dust. Any collector worth his or her salt always has just one more thing that they want to show you before you leave.

If there’s any difference between Rick and the average collector it’s in the overwhelming excellence of his stuff. There are museum quality Hudson River School paintings stacked in his basement — Asher Durands, Martin Johnson Heades, Cropsys — because he no longer has room for them on his walls. In fact, he lends works to the Met, the Tate, London’s National Gallery. “It’s like having your children on stage,” he explained.

We could have spent the whole afternoon in a single room as he explained the history behind one object after another. I tried to take notes but I couldn’t keep up. Plus, taking notes is a drag when you’d prefer to absorb the beauty and quality of objects. Besides the paintings there a Duncan Phyfe piano, pinkish marble side tables once owned by Rolling Stone Keith Richards and his wife Patti Hansen; a collection of Bakelite athletic trophies, none of which Rick personally won; an entire corridor filled with mesh Jazz Age purses; a pair of David Rockefeller’s riding boots; an ensemble of handmade Alsatian marionettes; Harry Truman’s Presidential cufflinks and tie clip; and a bust of Benjamin Franklin, one of only two that the statesman sat for during his lifetime. “As I said,” Rick cautioned, “stop me.” He meant if I was feeling overwhelmed because we were only scratching the surface.

I was enjoying myself but I also had to drive my wife to the train. No, really. That night Rick gave my conundrum — whether to collect or purge — more thought. He wrote in an email, “Since when would ‘age,’ alone, be any reason not to partake of the “experience” of a terrific Indian restaurant or a great jazz club or an excursion to an exotic locale?” He continued, “If anything, advancing age is the very reason to seize the experience. I often motivate myself by asking, ‘If not now, then when?’”

I couldn’t agree more. So I’m going painting hunting next weekend.