"925,000 Campsites: The Commodification of the American Experience" by architect Martin Hogue
Opening Reception
Date: October 30, 2014Time: 6:00pm to 8:00pm
Location: Don B. Huntley Gallery
Event Info
Date/Time:
Opening Reception: Thursday, October 30, 2014 - 6-8pm
Architect's Lecture: Friday, October 31, 2014 - 12pm
Exhibition: Thursday, October 30 - Thursday, November 20, 2014
Location:
Don B. Huntley Gallery
Check out our Gallery Exhibition Below.
"925,000 Campsites: The Commodification of the American Experience"About the Exhibition
To tell the story of the commodification of camping is not to tell the story of anyone site or even anyone campground, but rather to examine how this cultural ideal of rugged American character came to be appropriated and transformed into widely replicated templates and generic spatial protocols. It is to talk not only about campers but also about the crucial role of motor vehicles in shaping this narrative, which begins rather innocuously with early twentieth-‐century roadside bivouacs and culminates in today’s tightly organized loops of dedicated plots. Tracing the historical arc that connects late 19th-century recreational campers to the Adirondacks with overnighting RVers in a Walmart parking lot, this exhibit puts forth four key themes: Campsites: as function as the standard the unit of management of any campground; Geography: examines camping destinations ranging from Yosemite NationalPark to the KOA on the Las Vegas Strip; Services: the wide array of utilities that service modern campgrounds; Operation: the organization of campgrounds into national systems that are key to measuring the radical physical and cultural transformations of the campground in the past century. Taken together, these form a coherent basis to this fascinating temporal narrative that is 925,000 Campsites: The Commodification of the American Experience.