This story, about the clutter of News Corp related ephemera sitting in the hallowed main hall of the Smithsonian Castle (near where my relative, Robert Kennicott, once lived and worked), got a bit lost while I was away nattering about Mark Twain and Wagner. The flimsy news peg for posting it here is the revelation that American Idol has a new judge. Yawn. But I am interested in how serious museums try to maintain their scholarly integrity while collecting and contextualizing pop culture material. The Smithsonian probably does fine with that. But you sense the hand of the marketing people in this particular bit of silliness.
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