“Clean Out Your Closets” and Send Your Animal Rights Relics to the Museum of Animals & Society

If you’ve been paying attention, you already know that we hens are having a virtual love affair with The National Museum of Animals & Society. We can’t get enough of the unique and artistic ways they are changing the world for animals, which is why we keep covering them here at Our Hen House. Hopefully you listened to our podcast interview with Museum President Carolyn Merino Mullin. Carolyn’s vision is inspiring, and the projects that NMAS sets forth are vitally important ingredients to the change that so many of us animal advocates are cooking up. One project we recently reported on was their visual history of humane education, aptly titled “Be Kind.”  We were also full of awe when NMAS hosted the virtual exhibit, “Souls Awakened: The Animals Who Have Shaped Us.”
But their newest project is perhaps my favorite. The “Clean Out Your Closet!” campaign is asking those of us who have been around for long enough to have t-shirts with the original Farm Sanctuary rainbow logo on them to dig deeper, and find and donate old animal rights related artifacts to NMAS’ permanent collection. This can include everything from audio recordings, to old films, to flags, relics, tchotchkes, magazines, books, buttons, brochures, art, toys, whatever! As long as the artifacts are in one way or another about the animal protection movement — be they in support of, or in opposition to…

Now, as you probably know, I’m temporarily displaced, on location with my darling Mariann in Portland, OR, and away from our home in NYC. So I have with me little more than a couple of backpacks full of various wires necessary to publish our podcast, way too many socks, monkey bandaids, and nutritional yeast. But back at home — or, more specifically, in my storage unit — there are old banners, sloppily made buttons from ancient AR campaigns (many of which I’ve inherited, as they are from way before my AR time), and other AR relics I’ve picked up here and there. So, NMAS, when I’m right-side-up again and back in the Big Apple, expect some mail from me!
Got stuff? Email NMAS’ collection manager, Abbie Rogers, at abbie[at]museumofanimals[dot]org.