The Psychology of Why We Collect

For Noah Wunsch, a 36-year-old New Yorker, collecting is in his blood. His late grandfather was E Martin Wunsch, an engineer and prolific collector who accumulated more than 700 pieces of early American furniture, paintings, silver, ceramics, and folk art. These now form the core of the Wunsch Americana Foundation, which lends historical objects to museums and funds educational initiatives across the United States.

Wunsch himself collects contemporary design, furniture, and photography (he’s drawn to Robert Mapplethorpe, Nan Goldin, and Ryan McGinley, among others), and his motivations are layered. Collecting, he says, is about “cultivating a taste and aesthetic and kind of a worldview,” but also “an...