The Barbican is to host the first major exhibition in the UK of the personal collections of post-war and contemporary artists.

Magnificent Obsessions: The Artist as Collector will feature personal effects from artists including Damien Hirst, Andy Warhol and Sir Peter Blake.

The items range from Hirst's skulls, taxidermy and medical models to Andy Warhol's cookie jars.

It will run at the Barbican Art Gallery from 12 February to 25 May 2015.

The exhibition looks at how artists throughout history have acquired collections for personal and artistic reasons.

Andy Warhol, for example, stopped by antique and junk shops daily to look for items.

Many of the objects he collected served as source material for his famous silkscreen prints.

The exhibition will use the artists' own display techniques, placing their effects alongside key examples of their work.

The gallery said the show aimed to give an insight into how these items inspired, influenced and sometimes obsessed them.

Sir Peter Blake's collection of masks and elephant figurines will also be on display.

German conceptual artist Hanne Darboven collected a diverse range of objects that filled her family home. The resulting rooms of curiosities were inextricably linked to her work.

The collections vary from a handful of objects to more than 3,000 pieces and range from mass-produced popular culture items to rare artefacts.

The French-born artist Arman developed an interest in African art as a student. His habit of assembling collections of like objects became a hallmark of his accumulation sculptures in the 1960s.

His collections include important examples of African art and Japanese samurai armour.

(BBC)

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