To some extent, no matter how modest our homes, we are all collectors. We prize objects, artworks, books, records, even if their value might be more personal than financial. Some people are lucky enough to own a collection of privately acquired artworks, some even live in homes built for the purpose of showing off that collection. At least they can still enjoy their artworks during lockdown while those of us who usually experience visual culture in public spaces feel its absence.
A couple of years ago, the idea of how we might live with art in our homes rather than in a museum was rekindled with the reopening of collector Jim Ede’s Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge.
In fact, the modernist home, so often associated with a dry, ascetic minimalism, was always seeped in art and things, in collections and paintings, the sheer joy of stuff. Think of Ernő Goldfinger’s house in Willow Road, London, the Eames House in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, or Lina Bo Bardi's Casa de Vidro in São Paulo: they are houses made for living with art as well as space.