Collection Diary

For one year, respected critic and curator Bob Nickas put his money where his eyes are: he decided to become a collector, someone who takes art off gallery walls instead of hanging it there. His ground rules dictated that he would buy one work per month from an artist he had never written about or exhibited before. In this fascinating diary of his year on the market, he tracks the changes in his relation to art, when the commitment becomes one of the wallet and not just the mind and words. "It has affected the way I look at art," he writes. "On the one hand, if I am unwilling to part with my hard-earned money, how worthy can the art really be? On the other, there are certainly works far above my humble means... For this project, I have had to pay to have my say."