Commodification of camping exhibit at College of Architecture

            The transformation of camping in the United States will be the subject of an exhibit, "925,000 Campsites: The Commodification of an American Experience," opening Jan. 21 at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Architecture.

            The exhibit will consist of works by Martin Hogue, the William Munsey Kennedy Jr. Fellow at the State University of New York's Department of Landscape Architecture, and will be on display through Feb. 7.

            Modern campgrounds are replete with delightful irony: They are serviced by an increasingly sophisticated range of utilities and conveniences, yet marketed to perpetuate the cherished American ideal of the backwoods camp. Each "lone" campsite functions as a stage upon which cultural fantasies can be performed in full view of an audience of fellow campers interested in much the same "wilderness" experience. As the exhibit title suggests, that parcel of land upon which travelers may pitch a tent (and will almost certainly park their car, trailer, camper or recreational vehicle) is thus only an imagined ideal. Serviced by extensive networks of infrastructure and populated with trailers and $300,000 RVs, campgrounds celebrate a unique form of American ingenuity in which intersecting narratives and desires (wilderness, individuality, access, speed, comfort, nostalgia, profit) have become strangely and powerfully hybridized.

            Using author-produced maps and diagrams, as well as a collection of archival materials, the exhibit examines how this cultural ideal of rugged American character came to be appropriated and transformed into widely replicated templates and generic spatial protocols.

            Tracing the historical arc that connects late-19th-century recreational campers to the Adirondacks with overnighting RVers in a Walmart parking lot, this exhibit posits four key themes that reflect the radical physical and cultural transformations of the campground in the past century: the campsite as the standard unit of management of any campground; the geography and the range of destinations from Yosemite National Park to the KOA on Las Vegas Strip; the rise of services as the primary criteria for campground comparison; and the organization of campgrounds into national systems and franchises. Together these themes illustrate the history of 20th-century American landscape.

            Hogue will give a lecture on this and other recent research projects at the Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center, 313 N. 13th St., at 4:30 p.m. Feb. 7. A First Friday reception will follow immediately in the College of Architecture, 10th and R streets. The exhibit, lecture and reception are free and open to the public. Exhibit hours are 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday. Guest parking is available in the Stadium Drive Parking Garage and metered stalls in downtown Lincoln. For more information, call 402-472-3560 or visit http://archweb.unl.edu.

            Trained as an architect and landscape architect, Hogue explores the notion of "site" as a cultural construction -- specifically, the mechanisms by which locations become invested with the unique potential to acquire the designation of site. His research has been supported with residencies at the MacDowell Colony (2005), the Center for Land Use Interpretation (2006) and the Canadian Center for Architecture (2009).  Hogue was appointed Hyde Chair in Excellence at the UNL College of Architecture in 2004. His work has appeared in 306090, Architecture-Quebec, Bracket (2014), Dichotomy, Grounds (2014), Landscape Journal, Numero, Pidgin, Places, Thresholds and the Journal of Architectural Education. His 2003 photographs of Robert Smithson's "Spiral Jetty" appeared in Bookforum, Numero and two monographs on the work of the artist published by the Dia Art Foundation and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. Hogue's drawings have been exhibited widely at venues including Ohio State University, the Urban Center in New York and the Center for Land Use Interpretation.

Writer: DiAnna Hemsath