When an object is accessioned into a museum collection, it undergoes
what one might consider a rite of passage. It is evaluated, purified,
given an official name. After the "rites" (which, of course, have
practical  value, too), the object has a different use than it had
before. Chairs no longer function as seating furniture, wood planes no
longer shave boards, clothes no longer cover bodies. As part of a museum
collection, objects come to function  as part of other social systems:
education, research, community definition, identity formation, etc.
(Trickier to talk about the "artwork" category this way, but still
possible, I think.)

The change in an object's *symbolic* function between its pre- and
post-accessioned life might be harder to see. A garment once
communicated information about its wearer's place in a society, and, in
a museum, it continues to communicate something about relationships
among people.

When an object's primary function is symbolic -- as is a flag's -- the
difference between its function outside and inside the museum is even
subtler. But I'm pretty sure the difference is still there. In the
List's discussions about the WTC flag, "display" seemed to have
different meanings extra-museum and in-museum.

In any event, I think that when we accession objects, we do so in order
to preserve the evidence of their "lives," and we also effectively end
the part of their "lives" of which they are evidence for us (unless they
become evidence about people and museums). If and when the remaining
piece of the WTC flag becomes part of a museum collection, it will no
longer be able to function as it would have for some veterans, as other
Listers have noted.

There's almost a Heisenberg uncertainty principle at work here. Or maybe
an effect parallel to that of modern news media, whose presence as
"recorders" surely changes the events they "record."

Check out how participants in the retirement controversy describe their
perspectives in an article from NJ's Star-Ledger:
http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index.ssf?/page1/ledger/14c69c6.html

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