Word: objectivity
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...word "collectibles" has entered the language. To the serious accumulator, a collectible is any object of intrinsic value and aesthetic appeal. Forget the bottle tops. The field by definition includes such esoterica as crystal paperweights and samurai swords, but anything that can loosely be called art draws the richest audience and the fiercest competition for ownership. And the area is continually expanding as fads and fashions change...
American folk art, however humble its origin, is soaring in value as well-crafted objects like pewter pots, duck decoys, quilts and scrimshaw (erotic examples in particular) become ever scarcer. Photographs are commanding fine arts prices; an original print of Ansel Adams' Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico sold last week for a record $22,000. "We can see the day when a single photograph will fetch $100,000," says Philippe Garner, a Sotheby's photographic expert. Almost any object from the once scorned 19th century now seems as precious as Suez Canal Co. stock was in its heyday. Twenty...
...that museums are, in spirit, secular churches. In the eddies of this confluence, the work of art, battered and sucked this way and that by incompatible necessities, becomes simultaneously prominent and invisible. It can no longer speak as it once spoke. It is asked to become not an object of contemplation, but a spectacle. In the show-biz world that replaces the more subtle processes of art appreciation, there are two kinds of artwork, Treasures and Masterpieces. Anyone can tell the difference. Treasures have gold in them, Masterpieces...
Over the past 20 years or so, for example, the McLean County Historical Society has been keeping an eye on an object in its care known as the McNulta time capsule. The McNulta in question, a Bloomington man, was a Civil War general in the 94th Illinois Volunteers. The time capsule was an etched glass bottle, seven inches high and sealed with a broken stopper, containing several mysterious thin packages wrapped in cloth. A notification tucked into its base read: "Souvenirs of the meeting of the Society of the Army of Tennessee. Held at Chicago November 1879. To be kept...
...chance to show off expensive special effects. The first part of The Motion Picture describes the reunion of the major cast members on the pretext that they are required on board the refitted U.S.S. (United Space Ship) Enterprise to battle a never-before-encountered "thing." ("Why is any object we don't understand always called a 'thing'?" asks Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy (DeForest Kelley) in typical Star Trek: The Television Show fashion). The "thing" is headed for Earth, gobbling up everything it encounters...