The Giant Wakens: Revising Henry Ford’s History Book

Abstract

Exhibit Reviews THE GIANT WAKENS: REVISING HENRY FORD’S HISTORY BOOK JOHN M. STAUDENMAIER, S. J. In the museum world it remains the sleeping giant. The technological collections from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are superb, rivaling any to be found at the Smithsonian, the Deutsches Museum, or the Science Museum in South Kensing­ ton. But the collections still await a board of trus­ tees, an administration, a curatorial staff, and an exhibit philosophy and design that will do them jus­ tice. If the museum decided tomorrow to redo the Hall of Technology a second time, it would be none too soon. A whirlwind tour requires at least a full day, and that day can be exhausting and ultimately monoto­ nous.1 A winter’s day in 1983 and, fresh from an encouraging working lunch with Harold Skramstad and major division directors, I walked the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village acres of the Edison Institute. “How,” I asked myself, “can one possibly use this ‘exhausting and ultimately monotonous’ array of artifacts as a teaching tool for the history of technology?” Three full years after Larry Lankton’s elegant and devastating exhibit review, little change was evident. Greenfield Village still resembled nothing so much as a collection of shrines to Henry Ford’s heroes and the muDr . Stacdenmaier is an associate professor of the history of technology at the Uni­ versity of Detroit. His Technology’s Storytellers: Reweaving the Human Fabric (MIT Press, 1985) won the 1987 Alpha Sigma Nu Social Science Book of the Year Award. Stu­ dents in his survey course make two Saturday trips to the museum and village each term. Senior and graduate students work closely with the curatorial staff on seminar research projects. ’Larry Lankton, “Something Old, Something New: The Reexhibition of the Henry Ford Museum’s Hall of Technology,” Technology and Culture 21 (October 1980): 613, 612.© 1988 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/88/2901-005$01.00 118 The Giant Wakens: Revising Henry Ford’s History Book 119 seum, in Lankton’s memorable expression, still flung “miscella­ neous information in the faces of visitors, forcing them to do the synthesis that the designer was unwilling or unable to do.” Yet lunch with the Edison Institute team encouraged me. These were bright, alert men and women. Our mutual interest in a contex­ tual interpretation of America’s technological style more than bal­ anced my first feelings of educator dismay. In fact, the tone of the group has proved the more important of the two first impressions. Though hardly visible in 1983, Skramstad’s leadership had already set in motion the very reforms called for in Lankton’s review.2 Now, four years later, signs abound that Lankton’s “sleeping giant” is waking, signs so impressive and refreshing that they call for an up­ date for readers of Technology and Culture. I observe changes on four levels: (1) Skramstad’s managerial style, which led to (2) the for­ mulation of an overall vision and strategy, which, in turn, (3) has re­ sulted in an array of impressive major projects, and (4) subtle changes on the micro-level of interpretation. Shortly after his arrival in 1981 Skramstad initiated an overall con­ ceptual study leading to a thematic self-definition: “technological and social modernization in the United States.” This established the future style for the institute’s key standing committees, collections and interpretation. Both groups begin specific sector analysis by artic­ ulating the themes that will govern future strategies. Thus, collections, the standing peer-review committee for determining ap­ propriate objects, has established an endowment (currently ca. $1.5 million) through the sale of artifacts judged redundant, out-ofscope , or in poor condition, in a move away from serendipitous collecting and toward thematically coherent acquisitions. In like fash­ ion, the Interpretation Committee debates the thematic rationale for each new project before determining strategies. Once approved, major projects are implemented by Skramstad’s full-court-press style: tight time frames that call on personnel throughout the insti­ tute, even at the expense of normal operations.3 The exhibit2Perhaps the most important structural change that accompanied Skramstad’s ar­ rival...