Highlights Archives
Past Presidential Elections Recalled at Museum
Foreign wars, trade, immigration, taxes, recession, health care, the environment, character, experience … today's concerns have played themselves out many times in our nation's political history. As public attention remains focused on the presidential contest of 2008, the Wisconsin Historical Museum is giving people a chance to step back and review past election seasons in its new exhibition, That's the Ticket! A Parade of Presidential Elections. The exhibit opened April 15 and runs through Saturday, November 8.
 Franklin Delano Roosevelt in a Milwaukee parade, October 1, 1932 (Image ID 54380) In the exhibit, summaries of 38 elections provide critical information about the major parties' slates of candidates (tickets) for president and vice president, and the popular and electoral votes they won. Campaign and election highlights are supplemented by electoral maps, more than 400 artifacts and images from the rich collections of the Wisconsin Historical Society, and photographs from the Wisconsin State Journal and The Capital Times. Objects from political campaigns, party conventions and presidential inaugurations provide vivid reminders of candidates, issues and the myriad ways that voters showed their support.
The exhibition's starting point is the election of 1856, the first in which the Democratic Party faced off against the Republican Party, which had been founded two years earlier in Ripon, Wisconsin. That election reflected the political firestorm surrounding the extension of slavery in the West. The exhibition proceeds chronologically through 2004 and includes an election in which a small group of people granted the presidency to the popular vote loser following a dispute about vote tallies — the election of 1876. Along the way, exhibit visitors revisit economic and social agendas, scandals, negative campaigns, sectional feuds, dark horses and popular leaders of the past.
 Eisenhower and Nixon supporters, 1952 John Newhouse photo (Image ID 48022) Colorful arrays of political buttons, ribbons, bumper stickers, handbills, broadsides, tickets, pins, pennants, license plates, clothing, novelties and other objects punctuate the narrative. A rare Benjamin Harrison campaign hat from 1888, a Teddy Roosevelt bandana from 1912, Franklin Roosevelt and Wendell Willkie powder compacts from 1940, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon car antenna flags from 1960, and Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter pocket knives from 1980 are among the many items on display. Several of these fascinating objects can be seen in an online slide show organized by the Wisconsin State Journal.
Editorial cartoonist Joe Heller designed and donated an original illustration specifically for That's the Ticket! An exhibition of Heller's cartoons is on display at the Neville Public Museum in Green Bay from April 19 through September 7, 2008.
During the spring of 2008 Wisconsin Historical Museum education staff is incorporating That's the Ticket! into the popular Why History Matters guided program. For this program, staff is using images and graphics from Voices and Votes: How Democracy Works in Wisconsin and from the Wisconsin Historical Society's online photographic collection, Wisconsin Historical Images.
That's the Ticket! is open through November 8 at the Wisconsin Historical Museum. For more information, visit the museum's home page or call 608-264-6555.
:: Posted April 16, 2008
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