A book on the questions and challenges that museums face in acquiring and preserving contemporary art. This book comprises essays by twelve distinguished curators representing a wide range of museums. The closing essay examines the conservation problems created by contemporary works.

Following are groups of essays that address collecting in particular media, including prints and drawings, new (digital) media, and film and video; and national- and ethnic-specific collecting (contemporary art from Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and African-American art). The closing essay examines the conservation problems created by contemporary works - for example, what is to be done when deterioration is the artist's intent? The contributors are Christophe Cherix, Vishakha N. Desai, Steve Dietz, Howard N. Fox, Chrissie Iles and Henriette Huldisch, Pamela McClusky, Gabriel Perez-Barreiro, Lowery Stokes Sims, Robert Storr, Jeffrey Weiss, and Glenn Wharton.

Collecting the New: A Historical Introduction by Bruce Altshuler 1
The Right to Be Wrong by Howard N. Fox 15
To Have and to Hold by Robert Storr 29
9 Minutes 45 Seconds by Jeffrey Weiss 41
Breaking Down Categories: Print Rooms, Drawing Departments, and the Museum by Christophe Cherix 55
Keeping Time: On Collecting Film and Video Art in the Museum by Chrissie Iles and Henriette Huldisch 65
Collecting New-Media Art: Just Like Anything Else, Only Different by Steve Dietz 85
Beyond the "Authentic-Exotic": Collecting Contemporary Asian Art in the Twenty-first Century by Vishakha N. Desai 103
The Unconscious Museum: Collecting Contemporary African Art without Knowing It by Pamela McClusky 115
The Accidental Tourist: American Collections of Latin American Art by Gabriel Perez-Barreiro 131
Collecting the Art of African-Americans at the Studio Museum in Harlem: Positioning the "New" from the Perspective of the Past by Lowery Stokes Sims 147
The Challenges of Conserving Contemporary Art by Glenn Wharton 163
Acknowledgments 179
Index 181
Photography Credits 194