I too came to this discussion late. I was watching the World Series Tuesday night and they had the WTC flag flying at Yankee Stadium. It was torn in the middle and I wondered if the strong wind would cause further damage.
 - V.P.

Exhibitions Department wrote:

> I came in late to this discussion and may have missed something, but I think
> the best decision would be to preserve it in context as part of an eventual
> on-site memorial rather than removing it to a contextless preservation site
> (such as a museum).  Museum professionals and artists working together
> should be able to come up with the ideal balance of meaning and object
> conservation, with emphasis on meaning. If it decays in 200 rather than 2000
> years, so be it, but we owe it to our own history to think about preserving
> it as a tangible representation of the event that forever changed our view
> of ourselves.
>
> Julia Moore
> Indianapolis Art Center
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Museum discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On
> Behalf Of Marybeth Tomka
> Sent: Saturday, October 20, 2001 5:24 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: WTC fkag
>
> I would like to comment not on whether the flag should be preserved (since
> it is already Saturday, the 20th) but rather on the thoughts of some that it
> shouldn't be kept.  I am an archaeological collections manager and we are
> faced with making retention decisions all the time.  Some archaeologists
> very dedicated to the preservation of certain types of artifacts and do not
> think other categories need to take up our valuable and dwindling curation
> space.  I personally believe that we can not make decisions for future
> researchers  without considering the whole picture.  So back to the flag.
> It might not be as meaningful in a musuem for some people, but I think that
> one look at the flag and acknowledgement of where it came from would bring
> tears to the eyes of another visitor.
>
> Just my opinion.
>
> Marybeth Tomka
> Laboratory Supervisor and Collections Manager
> Center for Archaeological Research
> University of Texas, San Antonio
>
> and native New Yorker
>
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