Affinities in Form

This is both a study of the art of collecting and of the objects in the Wielgus collection at Indiana University Art Museum. The museum houses one of the finest collections of indgenous art in the world - the product of one man's acquisition over a period of just 20 years. This text examines the motives that led Raymond Wielgus to become a collector and that guided him to his chosen field. Wielgus originally made his name as a maker of high-quality prototype models for potential new products in the manufacturing industry, and the book shows how the experience gained in this profession moulded his view of the art of collecting. It lists the criteria that he applied to the objects to be included in the collection and assess the importance of the skill with which they were eventually displayed. The collection spans in excess of three thousand years of ethnographic art and contains works produced by the indigenous peoples of Africa, the islands of the Pacific (for example, Polynesia), and the Americas.
The book begins by analyzing the sources of the objects amassed since the dawn of collecting ethnographic objects in the early 1800s and discusses how representative thay are of their cultures of origins. It puts the Wielgus collection in context with other notable collections. The text acknowledges the probable damage that enthusiastic collecting has inflicted upon some of the sites from which these artefacts derive, but argues that this has been in part offset by the spread of knowledge through the literature published on the great collections. 100 of the most important objects from the Wielgus collection are illustrated in colour, and the photographs are divided into three sections: Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, and the importance of each is analyzed in the context of the history of the respective geographical regions.