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During Superheroes: A SuperPOWered Spring Break at The Children’s Museum, 543,856 total online or onsite votes were cast in a bracket-type contest. It pitted 28 superpowered heroes and villains from pop culture, literature, myths, and legends against each other and created an ultimate Superpower Showdown.
The digital voting was brought to life with a temporary Superheroes exhibit displaying rare costumes and artifacts connecting mythological and literary objects from the museum’s vast 120,000 artifact collection to pop culture memorabilia on loan from movie studios and private collectors.
“There’s no question that children and adults love superheroes,” said Dr. Jeffrey H. Patchen, president and CEO, The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis. “We develop exhibits designed to encourage family interaction and promote intergenerational learning. This exhibit, in particular, stretched imaginations and knowledge of self in terms of what anyone can accomplish with the right vision and motivation.”
“A hero can be anyone, even a man doing something as simple and reassuring as putting a coat on a young boy’s shoulders to let him know that the world hadn’t ended,” said Batman during “The Dark Knight Rises”.
The SuperPOWered Spring Break exhibit and voting campaign (March 16 – May 5) significantly contributed to record-breaking spring break attendance at the museum. Other key exhibits at that time included Hot Wheels For Real!® and Geckos.
By the numbers:
- 543,856 total votes
- 75,086 votes for Batman (in the final matchup with Wolverine)
- 62,056 votes for Wolverine (in the final matchup with Batman)
- 5,867 votes for Monkey King (most votes for world culture character)
- Votes were registered from 50 cities in 21 countries on 5 continents (in addition to votes from the United States of America). Some of those continents/countries included: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Great Britain, Malta, Singapore, Trinidad & Tobago among others.
The Children's Museum of Indianapolis is a nonprofit institution committed to creating extraordinary learning experiences across the arts, sciences, and humanities that have the power to transform the lives of children and families. For more information about The Children's Museum, visit www.childrensmuseum.org, follow us on Twitter @TCMIndy, Facebook.com/childrensmuseum and YouTube.
