American Museum of the Moving Image

Innovative Online Exhibition

The Living Room Candidate:
Presidential Campaign Commercials 1952-2004 Exhibition of more than 250 television commercials and web ads from Eisenhower vs. Stevenson through Bush vs. Kerry and sidebar “The Desktop Candidate,” about the role of the Internet, offers a moving-image history of campaigns New York City, July 1, 2004.

American Museum of the Moving Image announces the launch of The Living Room Candidate: Presidential Campaign Commercials 1952-2004, an innovative online exhibition presenting more than 250 television commercials from every presidential campaign year since 1952.

Visitors to the Museum’s Website can watch nearly four hours of TV commercials. The site includes a searchable database and features commentary, historical background, election results, and navigation organized by both year and theme.

“This timely exhibition comes during a year when the major parties will spend hundreds of millions of dollars creating and airing commercials,” says Rochelle Slovin, director of the Museum.

“The Living Room Candidate combines the Museum’s three key subjects: film, television, and digital media, to create an exhibition that is entertaining and educational.” The Living Room Candidate, on display at www.movingimage.us, demonstrates how advertising techniques and styles have evolved over the years, even as basic strategy has remained the same.

The exhibition includes such landmark ads as the groundbreaking “Eisenhower Answers America” spots of 1952, the notorious “daisy girl” ad from Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 campaign, Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America” ads from 1984, and the controversial attack ads run by George Bush’s 1988 campaign. The exhibition will be completely up to date, with a selection of commercials from 2004, and a sidebar exhibition The Desktop Candidate, about the rapidly growing medium of Web-based political advertising.

“The Living Room Candidate is a series of time capsules—short films that use all the techniques of Hollywood, including script, visuals, editing, music, and performance—to sell a candidate, raise doubts about the opponent, and compress the key issues of a campaign into thirty seconds,” said David Schwartz, the Museum’s Chief Curator of Film and co-curator of The Living Room Candidate.

“When television emerged in the early 1950s as a popular form of mass communication, television advertising became an essential campaign tool. Similarly, as the Internet grows and becomes ubiquitous, it has become crucial for candidates to use the Web effectively,” said Carl Goodman, the Museum’s Curator of Digital Media & Director of New Media Projects and co-curator of The Living Room Candidate.

To showcase the exhibition, the Museum Café is presenting an interactive installation that opens on June 30. Moving Image has also prepared a traveling version of The Living Room Candidate that will be on view at The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, in Dallas, Texas, from July 2, 2004 through January 30, 2005.

The Living Room Candidate was made possible in part by a video hosting donation from Mirror Image Internet, www.mirror-image.com and by a grant from The Liman Foundation.

The American Museum of the Moving Image is the only institution in the United States dedicated exclusively to the study of film, television, and digital media, and to examining their impact on American culture and society. A pioneer in its field, the Museum houses over 100,000 moving image artifacts. It presents many of these objects in its dynamic core exhibition Behind the Screen; annually screens more than 400 films; hosts notable series of personal appearances, lectures, and seminars; and operates an education program that serves 20,000 students and 1,500 educators each year.

The museum is located at 35 Avenue at 36 Street, Astoria, NY 11106. The administrative offices can be contacted at (718) 784-4520. For program information and travel directions contact (718) 784-0077. For further information visit www.movingimage.us.