By the Numbers: The Census in Public Art

Thanks to years of conservative pushback, the United States Census looks like a huge waste of time and taxpayer money to many Americans. Even worse, many Americans misconceive the census as the government’s insidious way of metaphorically looking through their keyhole to spy into their private lives. A commercial shown during the last Superbowl broadcast tried to redeem the census as ironic and cool, while other more wonky advertisements stressed the benefits to the community that come from participation in the census, which helps the government decide what bucks go where. Anita Glesta’s The Census Project (shown) tries to humanize the faceless government census bureau through large-scale public art that is both thoughtful and whimsical at the same time. Don’t fear the census, The Census Project wants to say, because the census is you, the census is Americans. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "By the Numbers."

Census project from Anita Glesta on Vimeo.

[Many thanks to Susan Grant Lewin Associates for providing me with the press materials for Anita Glesta’s The Census Project.]