Justice for Harlan Crow

Politico ran a nasty little item yesterday suggesting that Dallas businessman Harlan Crow is some kind of oddball or neo-Nazi because he owns two paintings by Adolf Hitler.

I've had the privilege of visiting Harlan Crow's collection of historical artifacts. This vast assembly of books and documents mostly emphasizes Americana of great rarity and value, including handwritten letters by Abraham Lincoln. The Crow collection is professionally curated, beautifully displayed, and will (I have little doubt) someday form a great public amenity, much like the Morgan Library.

To suggest that Crow somehow endorses Nazism because he has juxtaposed paintings by Churchill, Eisenhower, and Hitler is not to understand what collectors do or why collections exist. Great collections preserve and display the physical record of the past, and that record includes much evil. To record is not to endorse. You'd think that would be obvious, but apparently not.