Friends,

If your mission and collection policy provide for the collection of objects
which document your culture, then I see those things as appropriate.  They
are obviously artifacts related to issues and events which have influenced
your society.  Therefore they are, in themselves, documents of that
society, and could be included in a museum collection, if that museum's
mission is to collect objects which document the development of society
(unless your museum has chronological restrictions within its collection
policy, then only those objects which fit its chronological parameters
should be included.)

It's similar to the 1960s law enforcement riot gear in American museum
collections, or objects which relate to labor strife (clubs, picket signs,
etc.).   They are all documents of a culture.  The issue then shifts from
the objects' appropriateness to the ability of the museum to properly house
and care for the objects.  Museum's can't accept everything that is
appropriate, but in many cases must accept only those objects it feels it
can properly care for.

IMHO,
HBC

>Hi
>thanks to all of you who responded to my initial posting, I got a
>couple of queries from people in the states who didnt know what i was
>talking about (snip)

>Most of these thing are commonly used by anti-road protesters, now a
>pretty common occurrence in the UK, though I don't know about
>elsewhere - perhaps you do? The common tactic has been to occupy and
>live on  the proposed routes of new roads, particularly through rural areas,
>but
>also in towns, and obstruct the road building process by physically
>getting in the way.
>
>BENDER: a bit like a  do-it-yourself dome tent, (snip)
>
>TWIGLOO: similar, but up a tree - like a glorified tree-house really.(snip
>
>TOWERS: mostly used in urban sites, (snip)
>
>TUNNELS: In addition to the camps & twigloos at rural sites,
>particularly more recent ones where bailiffs got used to hiring
>climbers to get people out of trees, (snip)

>LOCK-ONS: within the eco movements, (snip)
>
>The point is, how do you collect thing like this? -can you? is it
>worth the bother?


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Henry B. Crawford        Curator of History
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