Hemp museum needs a home and helping hands

By Brian Florian
Source: theleafonline.com


The USA Hemp Museum’s online site features an original painting by Chris Conrad.

Cannabis has hundreds of years of history here in the US, and few artifacts have survived the era of marijuana prohibition. Those that exist are often scooped up into private collections and hidden away.

Richard Davis grew cannabis, made and collected artifacts and carried his collection around the U.S. in the 1990s and the early part of the 21st century.

Noted hemp activist Richard M. Davis took a different approach. He made and collected items and took them on the road in his pickup truck from place to place and set up up his displays at rallies, conferences — even in front of court houses and federal buildings. Davis created the USA Hemp Museum and curated it until he passed away on January 10, 2014 after a long battle with melanoma.

From grower to collector

Davis had a colorful history as an outlaw cannabis grower who provided medicine to patients and drove around the state with a large cannabis stalk attached to the top of his truck. He once sold marijuana at the Super Bowl in Arizona and included tax stamps issued by the state, confounding efforts to stop him until the legislature revised its cannabis tax. Davis had been storing and showing his collection at a warehouse space in the Los Angeles area upon request.

In his final days, Davis passed the mantle to pioneer activist Chris Conrad, known for transforming Jack Herer’s book, The Emperor Wears No Clothes, into the modern version that jump started the movement for legalization in 1990. Conrad, who has curated both the Amsterdam cannabis museum and the Oaksterdam Cannabis Museum at Oaksterdam University, Oakland CA, agreed to curate the artifacts and online museum, which is now being updated.

Her mission is to preserve Davis’ legacy

Conrad is working with Brenda Kershenbaum, Davis’ long time companion who helped him in his quest, inherited the museum foundation and artifacts upon his death. The museum has become a big undertaking that overwhelms the handful of people trying to catalog and preserve it — and to find it a new home to be shown.

“The purpose of the museum is to document, ‘lest we forget,’ the history of this long war to freeing a plant was not won in a day and as this historical anomaly passes down to future generations, many of them have never heard of our pioneers and heroes,” said Kershenbaum.

All of the museum artifacts are presently stored and the website needs a major update Conrad and Kershenbaum are looking for a permanent location to house and make this collection open for the public to see. Both concede they need help in maintaining and funding the collection and websites.

Foundation seeks donations to support the effort

The World Cannabis Foundation, created in part to help fund and promote the USA Hemp Museum, had a re-organizational meeting September 20, 2014, with a goal described by Kershenbaum as being to “provide information that will help heal our bodies, our society, our planet without synthetics.”

Please contact foundation@hempmuseum.info to become involved in this effort.