Not a surprise in a society where we’re expected to “curate” our Facebook pages, but still entertaining. The WSJ labels #OWS “highly collectible“:
More than a half-dozen major museums and organizations from the Smithsonian Institution to the New-York Historical Society have been avidly collecting materials produced by the Occupy movement.
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Staffers have been sent to occupied parks to rummage for buttons, signs, posters and documents. Websites and tweets have been archived for digital eternity. And museums have approached individual protesters directly to obtain posters and other ephemera. The Museum of the City of New York is planning an exhibition on Occupy for next month.
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“Occupy is sexy,” said Ben Alexander, who is head of special collections and archives at Queens College in New York, which has been collecting Occupy materials. “It sounds hip. A lot of people want to be associated with it.”
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To keep established institutions from shaping the movement’s short history, protesters have formed their own archive group, stashing away hundreds of cardboard signs, posters, fliers, buttons, periodicals, documents and banners in temporary storage while they seek a permanent home for the materials…
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The lavish attention poured on the liberal-leaning movement has not gone unnoticed by conservatives. Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, blogged sarcastically under its “Corruption Chronicles” about the choice by the Smithsonian to document Occupy.
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“It looks like it’s taxpayer-funded hoarding, as opposed to rigorous historical collecting,” said Tom Fitton, president of the organization.
I guess no modern American movement is official until it’s given the WATBs a reason to, um, christen themselves.