|
|
|
Exhibition Review
"'Action, and Action Now': FDR's First 100 Days." William J. vanden Heuvel Gallery, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, Hyde Park, NY. http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/100HOME.HTML.
Temporary exhibition, March 4, 2008–March 4, 2009. 2850 sq. ft. Herman Eberhardt, exhibit curator and writer; James Sauter, designer; Bob Clark, supervisory archivist; Cynthia Koch, FDR Presidential Library and Museum director.
|
| "'Action, and Action Now'" emerged from discussions by the staff of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum on how to commemorate the seventy-fifth anniversary of FDR's first hundred days in office and a desire to explore in depth that heady period when aggressive political action seemed so necessary and so many innovative initiatives seemed so possible. The exhibit creatively and elegantly presents to students, teachers, and general audiences the outline of FDR's initial days in office, contextualizing his vigorous legislative agenda within the social, cultural, and economic environment of the early years of the Great Depression. What is especially striking and wonderful about this exhibit is the way form and content tightly recapitulate and reinforce each other. The exhibit—organized into four main units—utilizes symbolic motifs to emphasize central themes in Roosevelt's first hundred days in office. The extensive use of metaphorical design helps transform what might have been a flat, policy-focused exhibit into a dynamic, compelling physical and multimedia experience. |
1
|
|
Entering the William J. vanden Heuvel Gallery through a doorway and past an introductory text panel and a large cartoon poster showing FDR as a train engineer driving the "U.S. Recovery 'New Deal' Special," visitors are immediately transported into the cities, towns, and fields of "America, 1933." Ceiling-mounted projectors throw forth a multitude of powerful still and motion picture images onto three unusual projection screens, fabricated in three dimensions. Accompanied by enveloping and context-establishing sounds, the images portray the widespread social, economic, agricultural, and ecological plight of a depression-plagued nation. Each of the screens is characterized by a fascia—a stone building facade, a barn-board facade, and a horizontal, near floor-level cracked-earth surface—consonant with the images cast upon it: collective urban violence, unemployment lines, closed banks, weather-worn farmers, ill-clothed and hungry children, desperate mothers, parched earth, and farm auction signs. The screens and their positioning suggest the exhibit's metaphorical use of design elements to reinforce content. |
2
|
|
The second section of the exhibit, "A New President, A New Deal," takes visitors through the period leading up to FDR's inauguration, the inauguration on March 4, 1933, and the days that immediately followed. Using a range of images, ephemera, and objects such as the family Bible on which FDR took his oath of office, the exhibit covers the collapse of U.S. banks, the assassination attempt on FDR in Miami on February 15, 1933, and the tense relationship between Roosevelt and the outgoing president Herbert Hoover. Selections from FDR's first inaugural address can be heard at a listening station, and earlier drafts are available for reading. Also revealed is the president's immediate engagement with the widening bank crisis that threatened to paralyze the nation and the temptations for the abuse of power that extreme crisis made available to him. |
3
|
|
Next—linking "A New President, a New Deal" with the third major exhibit section, "Constructing a New Deal"—are two rooms devoted to "FDR's Conversation with America." In the first room, the president's brilliantly effective use of radio, the era's most important mass communication medium, is showcased. The visitor is transported into a 1930s kitchen, where FDR's "fireside chats" are explored through a carefully orchestrated multimedia presentation. Monadnock Media worked with FDR Presidential Library and Museum staff to create a typical working-class kitchen. An RCA Victor radio sits prominently on a small table at the center of the far wall. A six-minute video with selections from FDR's seemingly casual (but in reality well-scripted) radio addresses is synchronized to lighting that transforms the kitchen environment into a stage, linking the physical space of the kitchen and its objects with the aural and visual content of the media. |
. . . |
There are about 1112 more words in this article.
Please log in (or, if you are not yet an
authorized user, please go to the
User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
|
