Page 59 - The Hunt - Fall 2024

VINTAGE
Curate
Your
Curiosity
For collectors of all stripes, inspiration is easy to come by.
BY ROGER MORRIS
Wihatever we collect and no matter how long we’ve been collecting it, we need some place to go for inspiration and education. One-dimensional magazines, online sites and social media can only do so much to sate this desire to see and know more.
One possibility is visiting the people who’ve been collecting for years and doing it with a professional staff—and often a hefty budget made possible by private donors and perhaps even public funding.
Here are some thoughts on local institutions—or those a few hours away— that may change your perspective on your own collection. Even if you’ve visited before, you may want to check them out again for new exhibitions and acquisitions.
AUTOMOBILES. An affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution, the Antique Auto Club of America Museum in Hershey, Pennsylvania, has a strong educational
and experiential component, with both
a permanent collection and rotating exhibitions. The Simeone Foundation Automative Museum in southwest Philadelphia accentuates speed, featuring more than 75 antique and modern racing cars, from Alfa Romeo to Porsche. The America On Wheels museum in Allentown is home to 75 cars, trucks, motorcycles and bikes, with new exhibitions every six months.
WATCHES. Owned and operated by collectors, the National Watch and Clock Museum in Columbia, Pennsylvania, houses a collection of more than 12,000 clocks and
scholastic research center and training ground for repair and restoration. In Washington, D.C., the National Gallery
of Art houses the Kaufman Collection of American furniture and furnishings, dating from 1700 to 1830.
STAMPS. The Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum in D.C. includes exhibits that go beyond stamps, highlighting the people and the vehicles that have delivered mail through history. For the philatelist, the go-to is the William H. Gross Stamp Gallery, with hundreds of pullout frames containing more than 20,000 objects, including noteworthy stamps that have never been on public display.
COINS. Returning to the Smithsonian, we find a mind-boggling collection of currencies past and present from all continents. The National Numismatic Collection houses approximately 1.6 million objects and is believed to be the world’s largest collection of money and “transactional objects” in
the world. Here, you can also find the U.S. monetary system’s collection of record, plus
the collections of the U.S. Mint, Treasury and Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Don’t worry about the forms of payment accepted if you visit—admission is free.
EARTHENWARE. Depending on your area of interest, start with the Smithsonian and Winterthur collections and exhibits, then check out the New York museums, which often have extensive fine ceramics collections. If your interest is American pottery, from Colonial days to the farm stoneware
Owned and operated by collectors, the National Watch and Clock Museum houses a collection of more than 12,000 clocks and watches.
watches, plus exhibits on the art of making timepieces. For the serious collector, it also has a library and research component.
FURNITURE. Of course, the treasure
in our backyard is Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library—and it’s difficult to capture in words the breadth and depth of its collections, encompassing over 90,000 objects. Winterthur is also an important
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