I documented my day on my personal blog, so you can view the non-event of being an absentee voter
there. What I will most remember about Election 2012 is the inundation of images, stories, ads, and editorials that were in yards, in my mailbox, on my television, in phone conversations, etc. Since I wasn't voting in person, I only saw this detritus without seeing the civic event itself. This means that for the past six months, while I've felt immersed in the drama, the actual day seemed rather anticlimactic. Therefore, rather than focusing on the day of the election, I'd like to shift attention back to where most of the action happened: the race.
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, as part of her list of descriptors for today's museum, says that it can be an "artifact to be displayed in its own right, along with its history, operations, understandings, and practices." Therefore, I want to preserve an important artifact:
the targeted advertising. Since advertising is becoming increasingly important and diverse, I anticipate Disney
will create an AdLand park in the near future, one element of which will dedicated entirely to political advertising, with a special exhibit for Election 2012.
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| Image of Disneyland's theme park (as edited by me to add AdLand) originally from a teacher's blog. |
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett also mentions the trend, as we saw in the Center for History's living photos on Prohibition and the polio vaccine, of "experiential" exhibits. As an instructor, I've found that the more active and invested students are in their education, the more they learn and enjoy the process. Therefore, I am happy to jump on the experiential bandwagon. One of the trends I've noticed in museums lately have been what I'm going to call "self-identifying" exhibits. For example, Kohl's Children's Museum has an exhibit called "
All About Me," where you can "find out more about your likes and dislikes, your abilities and qualities, and find out what makes each visitor special and unique." Children can record their own voices, see themselves from various angles, and build bodies onto a skeleton. I remember that one of Chicago's large museums also ran a similar exhibit, but with more of a tech angle. The IUPUI's Advanced Visualization Lab showcased a four panel 3D screen, which would be a perfect way to integrate these various pieces into an exhibit about the targeted advertising campaign of the 2012 election.
