From Collection to Exhibit (1)

A collection can take many forms. I’ve seen collections that were so exquisitely organized they might as well have served as reference works. Others, including some of my own, are more in the “primitive accumulation” phase and a little chaotic as a result. Most collections will fall somewhere in between those two extremes.

If you have made the decision to exhibit part of that collection, the question arises of what you’re going to exhibit and how you’re going to exhibit it. The first thing to realize is that you’ll have to pick a clear subject to exhibit. As an example, I collect Paraguay, 1900-1945, stamps and postal history, but that’s a huge subject to exhibit! I’d have to pick a small subset of that to exhibit, for example the proofs and essays of that period, or postal rates for airmail. Something that will fit into a reasonable number of frames, before I go bankrupt on frame fees.

Once I have picked my subject, it’s time to start thinking about a plan. The general outlines of a plan will usually be obvious just from the subject. A study of postal rates will divide quite easily into rate periods; or rates for particular classes of mail; or mail to particular destinations or…okay, perhaps not quite that obvious.

You see the problem: you’ll have to make some choices. A clear plan is crucial for a successful exhibit and frankly, it just helps you tell the “story” of your exhibit much more easily. Here’s a simple trick that I’ve found helpful: make a list of what you feel are the really nice items in your collection that you’d like to include.

Making a list like that is easy for any collector. We know our collections, we know which items are the important items and we know which items are the most attractive items (and we will grudgingly admit that they might not be the same items as the important items). From that list we can see the outlines of a plan appearing, and maybe even more: the list might suggest that we need to strengthen some areas of weakness in our collection to bring it in line with a good plan for the exhibit.

Let me give you an example. Say I’m putting together an exhibit of Russian post offices in China. The first thing I’ll have to decide is if I want to focus on the stamps that were issued for these offices or on the postal history. Not too many stamps were issued, and it might be tough to fill more than 3-4 frames with this stuff (even including postal uses). So forget that, I’ll go for a postal history exhibit. I browse through my many albums of these covers (I hasten to add that this example is completely hypothetical) and select 30 covers I really like. And I see some problems developing. I have 10 really nice covers from Peking…that’s going to make the Peking office a little over-exposed. And I don’t have any nice covers from Hankow. I know they’re out there – I’ve seen them! – but I just haven’t found one for my collection yet. Since I can’t really ignore the Hankow office and its postal history I may have to either wait until I’ve found some Hankow covers, or rethink the exhibit and make it a “Peking Only” exhibit, for example.

And that leads me to the most heart-breaking decision any aspiring exhibitor has to make. I might have to leave some material I really like out of the exhibit, either because there are too many similar items in the exhibit already, or because it just doesn’t fit into what seems to be the logical plan for the exhibit. Curses! Take some time to shake your fist at the heavens and then get over it. Look on the bright side: maybe you’ve just discovered you really have some duplicate items, and selling them might enable you to buy some material you’re missing.

The final step is to take that list of “star” items and see if you can build a logical exhibit around it. A useful trick here is to start with a really rough plan and use that to decide roughly how much stuff goes into each part of the plan. You can then see if some sections are “bloated” and others are a little anemic, and change your plan (or the items you include) accordingly. By the way, it is always easier to make a selection from the material you have available, then it is to find you have just enough material to fill the frames, so choose your number of frames wisely.