Gallery View 1; Photo by PD Rearick
Representing Congress: UM-Dearborn’s District 1893-2024
2024
Masking tape and paper legend
26’ x 26’
As part of the solo exhibition AndyT’s Urban Vision 2001-2024, curated by Nadja Rottner; Stamelos Gallery Center, Dearborn, MI
Gallery View 1; Photo by PD Rearick
Gallery View 2; Photo by PD Rearick
“The fourth installation in the Representing Congress series displays historical alterations in Dearborn’s political geography, using acid-free taped to the floor. Encouraged to enter the artwork by walking on it, viewers experience the contrast between a statistical representation on a two-dimensional surface in a book and data placed in the tangible three-dimensional reality of space.”
— Curator Nadja Rottner’s wall label text for Andy T’s Urban Vision
Detail 1: Wayne & Monroe Counties
This pamphlet is a key to the congressional districts redrawn here on the gallery floor in colored masking tape. These are all of the congressional districts that the site of UM-Dearborn would have been in over the last one hundred and thirty years, even though the University has only been in existence since 1959. This district has been the 1st, the 6th, the 15th, the 16th, and now the 12th, but I choose to simply refer to it as “UM-Dearborn District”.
— Description from map legend pamphlet on display in the gallery
Detail 2: 1893-1933
Color Key to Drawing:
Black - Michigan’s 6th District 1893-1915, 53rd – 63rd Congress
Purple - Michigan’s 1st District 1915-1933, 64th – 72nd Congress
Blue - Michigan’s 16th District 1933 – 1964, 73rd – 88th Congress
Green - Michigan’s 13th District 1965 – 1973, 89th – 93rd Congress
White - Michigan’s 16th District 1973 – 1982, 93rd- 97nd Congress
Yellow - Michigan’s 16th District 1983-1992, 98th – 102nd Congress
Orange - Michigan’s 16th District 1993 – 2002, 103rd – 107th Congress
Red - Michigan’s 15th District 2003-2012, 108th – 112th Congress
Pink - Michigan’s 12th District 2013-2024, 113th – 118th Congress
Gallery View 3
Bibliography:
Historical Atlas of United States Congressional Districts: Seventeen Hundred and Eighty-Nine Thru Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Three by Kenneth C. Martis. Free Press, 1982
United States Congressional District Shapefiles by Jeffrey B. Lewis, Brandon DeVine, and Lincoln Pritcher with Kenneth C. Martis
http://cdmaps.polisci.ucla.edu/ — This site provides digital boundary definitions for every U.S. Congressional District in use between 1789 and 2012. These were produced as part of NSF grant SBE-SES-0241647 between 2009 and 2013.