Billy Jam argues that there are positives to curating items on the internet. “There is sort of that collector’s thing like baseball cards, where it’s like, ‘I have to have them all, and the rarer the better,’” he acknowledges, adding that while collectors from as far away as Russia have asked about buying the items he posts, he doesn’t sell his rarer items. “But I think a lot of it is based in a genuine interest, and the fact that you can share this information so readily.”
A growing number of universities are creating hip-hop archives, too. These institutions require funding that can run into the millions of dollars, not only to acquire objects but to also maintain them so they don’t mold or decay. There’s debate over what these institutions should look like, who should run them, and how they can strike a balance between reaching a curious public and exploiting the objects to their full monetary potential. How do you reconcile the issue between what an object is worth culturally and what it’s worth financially?
Historically, the relationship between acc
Read Full Article at pitchfork.com
