Suburban Kansas Dream: Museum of Suburbia

[thelakelander]

I wonder how this is going to turn out? 

Museum officials in Johnson County, Kan., propose spending $34 million to create the National Museum of Suburbia, a faux suburb where visitors could wander through a model ranch-style home, wonder at an exhibit of lawn furniture and topple pins on a re-created bowling lane.

- Among envisioned exhibits, to be built inside a cavernous former bowling alley and skating rink: a backyard fence with peepholes that let museum visitors spy on fake suburban neighbors played by actors in period suburban clothing. "There's a museum for barbed wire and a museum of light bulbs," says Larry Meeker, president of the Johnson County Museum Foundation Board, which is pushing the suburb museum, so why not a national museum for suburbia?

- "We thought, 'Why hasn't someone else thought of that?' " he says. Some locals think they know why not. "I just don't think it's a big turn-on to see something you can see every day," says Steve Rose, a Johnson County publisher of community newspapers and magazines who opposes the museum. "It's not like you're visiting ancient Rome." Indeed, there is plenty of real suburb in these parts already.

- The suburbia museum's backers cite a 2010 feasibility study that projects it could draw 60,000 annual visitors paying up to $6 each. The study didn't assess where visitors would come from, but museum believers say they expect tourists and residents from the nearby metropolis. "We want to be one of the local places that Kansas Citians tell visitors: 'This is a place you've got to see,' " says Mindi Love, executive director of the Johnson County Museum.

- Backers concede it may be 2018 before the suburbia museum opens its doors, but they do have a vision. The museum board's wish list includes displays of accouterments of suburban life, including school lunchboxes, electric toasters and camping gear. One proposed exhibit: "A Field Guide to Sprawl." Ms. Love, director of the Johnson County Museum, says she envisions restored bowling lanes and replicas of a drive-in movie theater. "We may bring in the smell of popcorn, the sound of kids playing on the [drive-in] playground and you can sit in the back of a car and watch television episodes on the movie screen about suburbia, all the way up to 'Modern Family.' "

- At the faux backyard fence, visitors would be able to look through knotholes at skits by live actors. "Suburbia is much more complicated than houses on a road," Ms. Love says. "We want to tell the story of suburbia, the good and the bad." The idea gained hold after a county museum in nearby Shawnee, Kan., suffered flood damage in 2009. Curators began looking for a new home for its suburban artifacts, including an exhibit of Tupperware and the "All-Electric House," a model home from the 1950s outside the museum. The museum and the county arts council held a forum to consider the idea of a suburbia museum.

full article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443493304578038920747409686.html