Course by Ann Butler, Director of Library & Archives, CCS Bard. How is collection curating a part of curatorial practice? How are collections assembled and why? This class offers an examination of the personal motivations and institutional mandates to collect presented through three distinct frameworks and collection types: the museum, the archive, and the library. How do they differ and how do they intersect? This class explores collection building in terms of institutional histories, national, transnational and cross-cultural initiatives, activism as a catalyst for collection building, and methods of connoisseurship versus a documentation strategy. The class will explore the acquisitions process within a range of collection contexts, intellectual property law, and questions of repatriation and restitution. The class is focused around a number of key guest lectures, readings and discussion, supplemented with site and collection visits.