109. The Rise and Fall of Enterprise Square, USA
Welcome to Museum Archipelago in Your Inbox, which does exactly what it says on the tin. Museum Archipelago, your audio guide to the rocky landscape of museums, is hosted by me, Ian Elsner.
For the last few decades of the 20th century, if you visited Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, you could have been serenaded by a barbershop quartet of audio-animatronic portraits of America's founders as framed on U.S. currency. This was one of the many exhibits at Enterprise Square, USA, a high-tech museum dedicated to teaching children about Free Market Economics. The museum, which found itself out of money almost before it opened, shut down in 1999.
Barrett Huddleston first encountered these exhibits as a wide-eyed elementary school student in the 1980s, mesmerized by the talking puppets, giant electronic heads, and interactive displays that taught how regulation stifled freedom. Years later, he returned as a tour guide during the museum's final days, maintaining those same animatronics with duct tape and wire cutters, and occasionally being squeezed inside the two-dollar bill to repair Thomas Jefferson.
He joins us to explore this collision of education, ideology, and visitor experience, and how the former museum shapes his own approach to teaching children today.
Gallery Continues 🎒
I keep coming back to this early Museum Archipelago episode, where I interviewed Julie Garcia about her thesis titled Faith Displayed As Science: The Role of The Creation Museum in the Modern Creationist Movement. We explored how creationist museums like the Answers in Genesis Creation Museum co-opt the language and display techniques of science museums to legitimize biblical literalism.
Archipelago at the Movies🍿 "The Simpsons" Uncut Femmes (2021)
Some of the best episodes of the Simpsons take place at a museum, but this one takes place at two: a World War II battleship, on which Marge gets stuck chaperoning an overnight field trip, and the Museum of Generational Wealth, which plays host to the annual Gen Gala.
In this episode, Rebecca Reibstein enlightens me about the Met Gala and unpacks the concept of camp, while we continue to refine the beats and twists of our own museum heist.
