“Museum collection gets temporary home….Govenor Ed Rendell foots bill for trucks to bring collection home”–Intelligencer Journal, 4-29-04, Lancaster, PA.
Alex Shear is deeply, passionately, fervently involved with the history of American popular culture. His collection of some 100,000 artifacts is a three-dimensional chronicle of the quintessential American spirit. He has been scouring flea markets, garage sales, and antique shows all over the country for roughly thirty-five years. He lives on the upper west side of Manhattan, but his collection will find a home in Lancaster, PA.
Tentative plans are for the Kendig C. Bare Public Saftey Building, former home of the city police and fire departments, to be converted into a state-of-the-art museum for the collection, which includes thousands of pieces of Americana, from transistor radios which look like Velveeta packages to baseball cards to Pez dispensers to Cabbage Patch dolls to various 7-Up bottle designs.
Four Mayflower Moving Company trucks left Yonkers, NY carrying the bulk of Alex’s prized collection and rolled into Lancaster, PA shortly before 6 p.m. Wed., April 28th. We spoke to Alex on the morning of April 29th as he and his director of operations, Kennedy Moore, drove back home to NYC.
“Alex Shear is the Charles Kuralt of the flea market; the Bob Vila of American culture, a pied piper of national pride; America’s inner child incarnate: Playful, funny, and possessed with an indomitable sense of wonder that is as fun as it is inspirational” —Jeff Sewald, Emmy Award-winning producer and director.
AskaNewYorker: Alex, could you have directed this dream you are working on from any other place other than New York City?
Alex: Impossible. It’s all about New York energy. There’s no way. You need an energy source, a fuel source, to put a rocket on the moon. New York City has that fuel, that gave me that value added, that X-Factor, that drove the engines to take this to the stratisphere. The energy, the drive, the can-do spirit is quintissential New York. This city has it’s own persona, it has a persona, people are intrigued. New York city has a life force, human like, everybody wants to meet Miss Liberty. It’s no mistake that she stands in New York harbor welcoming the world. This seemingly ice cold austere city has the biggest heart in the world. What other city could possibly could have opened up it’s heart to recieve so many of the tired, the wayward, the people, the dreamers, the people on thier last legs, their last dime, who did’nt even speak English and took the risk to come to this great country. They are the fiber, the collective energy, the hope, the dream.
AskaNewYorker: Could you give a synopsis of what happened in the last 72 hours?
Alex:A dream come true. What do you say after that?
AskaNewYorker: More is needed for this interview. Tell me more about your journey?
Alex: It’s been easy, joyful, scenic. When you’re climbing vertically you really don’t have time to rest, relax.You have moments to sit down but you can only do this x amount of hours a day. We’re going back to NYC in a very peaceful state. The mind does not rest relative to the inside because there is so much good stuff in front of us that all we can do is sit back and in car racing speak, ‘draft’ what’s ahead of us. There’s a team of people around me that will drive this situation foreward.
“The Man Who Owns Everything… People said Alex Shear was crazy for buying so much of America’s unwanted stuff. Now everybody’s after a piece of it”, David Owen reported in his July 1999 article in the New Yorker Magazine. “‘The Sultan of stuff’… Is Alex Shear’s odd collection just junk or a key to American culture?”
Ray Browne, distinguished professor Emeritus of popular Culture, Bowling Green University, Founder and Editor, Journal od Popular Culture, Founder, Popular Association had the following to say:
“You are the Walt Whitman of material culture. You are doing what the Smithsonian should have been doing…”
“…your material is an electrical current that activates thought on the part of all students and citizens alike on subjects from archaeology to zoology”
“…the very insightful letter you recieved from inside the academic establishment…mentioning some 75 courses in which your rich collection could be used to advantage…merely opens the door to its storehouse of riches.”
“In your collection you have catalogued the American spirit…”
“Your collection is the material of democracy, the voice of America…it is the statement of everyday life guaranteed by the constitution…”
‘It is the American flag raised a thousand feet in the air…”
“(Your collection) will probably have it’s most profound ramifications on…subjects (like) the development and groth of democracy…the breaking down of class in the United States, or the impact (of popular culture) on the…Constitution and the Bill of Rights.”
For more information see:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/egg/206/shear/
http://www.newsun.com/shear.html
http://www.promomagazine.com/ar/marketing_one_mans_junk/
