Grandmaster Flash and the Smithsonian’s new hip-hop collection.

DJs, like curators, are collectors, so when Grandmaster Flash and other hip-hop luminaries met up with some officials from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History the other day, there was some serious collecting to discuss. To begin with, museum director Brent Glass described his institution’s grand undertaking: “It’s the only museum in the world that has the mission of telling the whole of American history,” he said. It’s a tall order, but the museum’s holdings—nearly three million objects, which include a Pac-Man gumball bank, a bag of brown rice, and over a hundred pieces of Tupperware—give the impression that the curators cast a wide net. Now alongside the S. Newman Darby Windsurfing Collection, the museum will maintain an archive entitled “Hip-Hop Won’t Stop: The Beat, the Rhymes, the Life.”

Read Full Article by Austin Kelley – March 3rd, 2006.