The Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan has repackaged and repurposed its automotive collection in a new exhibit in 2012 called Driving America.
MCG regards the automotive collection at the Henry Ford Museum in three distinct phases. When, as a child, he first started visiting the museum with his father (MCG 1.0) the artifacts on display were a straightforward reflection of Henry Ford himself. The toys in Ford’s attic, more or less.
And of course, HF I liked cars, so there were lots of them—as many as would fit in the building, wedged in hubcap-to-hubcap. It was more of a warehouse than an exhibition, a treat for us gearheads but incomprehensible to civilians.
The museum cleared out Henry’s garage in 1987, installing a new exhibit called The Automobile in American Life. It featured far fewer cars, but they were arranged to form a coherent narrative demonstrating how the automobile has shaped our culture and our lives. Controversial when it opened, especially among car nerds, the exhibit proved successful and influential.
The third and current phase is the recently opened exhibit, Driving America. Not a radical departure from the previous one, the new installation is more of a refocusing. Accessions in recent years—the Summers Brothers’ Goldenrod Bonneville streamliner, Ohio George Montgomery’s ’33 Willys gasser—have broadened and democratized the story somewhat, but mainly we are again shown how the motor vehicle changed America, mainly via the auto industry. It’s well worth seeing, even if you have seen many of the cars before.
But the best part of a visit to the Henry Ford Museum today is an exhibit adjacent to Driving America called With Liberty and Justice for All. Its centerpiece is a 1948 GMC bus formerly operated in Montogmery, Alabama—the bus in which Rosa Parks, an African-American seamstress, refused to give up her seat to a white man, sparking the Montgomery bus boycott. Superbly curated, staffed with expert guides, this is an exhibit you must see. Parents, take your children. Children, take your parents. For more info, click over to The Henry Ford.org. Meanwhile, please enjoy the slide show below.
