Did you know Phil Collins loves Alamo artifacts just as much as Rod Stewart is obsessed with model trains? Well, it’s weird but true, with the Genesis front man going so far as to donate hundreds of Alamo-related artifacts to Texas in 2014 with the stipulation that the state open a museum at the landmark to house them by 2021. A new Wall Street Journal feature gives an update on how that’s going, and it seems the deadline is being met with equal parts chaos and reevaluation. Local activists, museum leaders, politicians, and Texas scholars are in gridlock over whether the museum “should be focused on celebrating the small group of leaders who played key roles or reflect a broader, more complicated tale,†the Journal reports, and Collins’s donations are stuck in storage. The musician had spent decades using his invisible touch to complete his collection, which includes excavated musket balls, Davy Crockett–signed documents, and knives. The $140 million museum broke ground this summer and now has a tentative 2026 opening.
Collins declined to comment when reached by the Journal, but the newspaper unearthed this 2012 quote from him: “It might seem strange that something so American could affect someone so young thousands of miles away. The Alamo story stuck with me, and there’s no getting away from that.†A Texas Monthly piece from this year paints Collins as an involved collector, visiting the Alamo frequently and participating in several excavation digs there. But several historians have cast doubt on the authenticity of Collins’s full collection, which he detailed in his 2012 book, The Alamo and Beyond: A Collector’s Journey. “The Collins collection contains more questionable pieces with more than questionable provenance by far than any collection I’m aware of,†one historian told the magazine. “Just about everything they said was used at the Alamo — these are not Alamo-related items,†another historian added. “A lot of us enjoyed the book just because of the silliness of it.†Now that you mention it, Genesis snubbed Texas on its farewell tour …