|
Editorial: Soak in the tree display
Op-Ed · November 30, 2017
The minds of the Herbert Hoover Library-Museum staff used imagination to spark imagination with this year’s Tales of the Sea-themed Christmas tree exhibit.
As with every year, the staff dresses each of the 20 trees beautifully to reflect the chosen theme. Tales of the Sea ties into Hoover primarily for how much time he spent traveling by boat while visiting the world.
That said, the name, Tales of the Sea, invoked in the staff an array of ideas that start with fictional stories, characters and places from books to film. They then touch on the plethora of occupations both on water and along the coasts. The exhibit includes biblical accounts like Noah’s ark and even famous tragedies like the sinking of the Titanic.
Sea vessels and sea songs and pirates and sea monsters — real or imagined — all complement each other with great effect.
Visitors can stop at one tree and find themselves entranced by the romantic appeal of lighthouses’ beauty and important duty. They can bask in the nostalgia of childhood stories of Loch Ness and King Neptune and Atlantis. They can allow themselves to get absorbed by the feeling of danger and loss and sadness recalling the history of the attack on Pearl Harbor and sinking of the U.S.S. Arizona.
The staff also decorated the exhibit hall to carry us further into the theme with blues and greens hung all around the room, videos projecting onto the surrounding walls showing fish and other sea creatures, and even sounds of bubbling water and pirate songs.
In this setting the Library-Museum staff invite us to step back to see the larger vision of the exhibit — grasping the awesome and powerful and even inspiring aspects of water that covers three-quarters of the world’s surface.
It is easy for us who live in West Branch and drive by the Hoover complex so often to forget that the muted and subdued building is one of the nation’s 13 presidential libraries and museums. Exhibits like this should nudge us to peek inside at least twice a year at the temporary exhibit. This year’s Christmas tree display is yet another that will appeal to the entire family — yes, teenagers, too.
We strongly recommend this display to anyone looking for a worthwhile way to get inspired or drawn into the Christmas spirit.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
