Creativity, Consumption, and Spectacle: Interrogating “Collectible” Design

The category of “collectible design” sits at two extremes, describing objects of high aesthetic intentionality, produced in small editions, circulating through the affluent world of private galleries, major auction houses, and commercial spectacles like Design Miami; and mass-produced items with pop-cultural or sentimental appeal, available across a wide retail and informal economy. Both ends of this spectrum complicate the role of design as typically articulated in the design academy and design-historical scholarship. This session seeks contributions that place the notion of design’s collectability—whether “high” or “low”—within broader historical, cultural, and critical frameworks to better understand its rhetorics, economics, and what it might tell us about the shifting meanings and methods of design in late capitalism. In addition to analyses of contemporary design activity, submissions are welcome to explore deeper histories of affluence, affect, and spectacular collecting; we invite critical considerations from practitioners and historians alike. Papers might consider topics such as:

• Retailers as patrons or partners in design production
• Material experimentation, manual skill, and formal complexity in design’s desirability
• The role of commercial ventures in shaping public or scholarly understandings of design
• Secondary and informal markets for design
• Galleries’ archival and quasi-didactic ambitions
• The histories and impacts of urban “design districts”
• Discourses of race, gender, and queerness in design markets
• Design educators’ and students’ intersections with collectible design
• Influencer culture and celebrity consumption in/of design
• The editorial shaping of design in magazines and other publications