COMING TO WASHINGTON: CIVIC SEASON

This Summer the Coming to Washington Project wants to help D.C.’s tourists and residents to get to know each other. What do you want visitors to know? And what do you want to know about them? Become part of  the Visitor: Information? installation that will be shared with visitors to DC at several Humanities Truck pop-up events over the course of the Summer tourist season.

On Thursday, June 20th and 26th join Heurich Humanities Scholar in Residence, M. J. Rymsza-Pawlowska, in the museum’s biergarten from 5:30 to 7:30pm to explore how visiting DC is all about participation and citizenship and leave your note for the installation. 

Free to participate. No RSVP! 

About the Installation:

Visitor: Information? is the Coming to Washington Project’s Summer 2024 installation and public program inspired by a tradition of vernacular public information and aid booths ranging from Ralph Nader’s Public Citizens Visitors Center, to structures at the Poor People Campaign’s Resurrection City, to Lucy’s psychiatry booth from the Peanuts comic.

Visitor: Information? approaches the interaction as reciprocal; the information as an exchange. Setting up at in-between or “downtime” locations that are convenient to Washington’s summer visitors—and yet outside or proximate to the city’s “official” tourist spaces-- we will offer help, advice, and information to visitors, and invite the same of them. The long-term goal of the Coming to Washington Project, organized by historian M.J. Rymsza-Pawlowska, is to foster more connection between Washington and its visitors and newcomers. It is our hope that small and unexpected interventions like this will be the start of a better understanding.

Celebrating Civic Season:

This pop-up connects to the national celebration of “Civic Season,” which takes place from Junetenth to July 4th. Civic Season unites our oldest federal holiday with our newest, mobilizing a movement to understand our past and shape our future. Many visitors to DC come out of civic obligation. They see their trip as an opportunity to visit the national stage to engage with history where national decisions happen. What do Washingtonians want visitors to know or understand about the city they live in beyond the typical tourist hot spots?