Exhibit Reviews “MADE IN AMERICA’AT THE HENRY FORD MUSEUM LARRY LANKTON In Dearborn, Michigan, nestled amid all manner of Ford Motor Company facilities, resides the Henry Ford Museum, an institution founded by the master manufacturer himself and one that he left chock-full of the tools and machines that produced a new way of life and work for Americans. Given its superb collection of technological artifacts—and given its local setting in a region that had gone from the proud “Arsenal of Democracy” to the “Rust Belt” in a mere three or four decades—the Ford Museum rightly decided that it was the proper institution to tackle an ambitious exhibit on the history of “American industry past, present and future,” entitled “Made in America.” The exhibit opened in December 1992, with funding assistance from corporations, foundations, individuals, the state of Michigan, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. William Pretzer served as chief curator. For exhibit design the museum turned to Albert Woods Design Associates of New York (the same firm that assisted with the museum’s successful “The Automobile in American Life” exhibit, opened in 1987). The new installation takes up 50,000 square feet of floor space, which for decades had been occupied by the museum’s extensive collections of industrial engines and metal- and woodworking machines. The museum rather ruthlessly culled these static collections to make room for this livelier, multimedia exhibit intended to tell stories about how things were made and about the people who made them— and also intended to explore contemporary topics such as global competition, productivity, product quality, environmental responsibil ity, and quality of work life. “Made in America” has three major sections: “Making Things,” “Making Power,” and “Making Choices.” Visitors willing to take nearly a full day to negotiate the entire exhibit maze (no doubt making at least a few wrong turns in the process) will see over 1,500 artifacts, several Dr. Lankton is professor of history at Michigan Technological University. In the early 1970s, he curated the Henry Ford Museum’s collections of power and shop machinery.© 1994 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/94/3502-0007$01.00 389 390 Larry Lankton operating machines, and fifteen videotapes running from a few to twenty minutes in length. They also can become active participants within the exhibit, by hand-cranking a generator (that challenges them to work harder to turn on more lights [fig. 1]) or by using a touch-screen computer that puts them at the controls of an electric power plant (fig. 2). Fig. 1.—Visitor participation is encouraged in “Made in America.” People work hard—and harder—to hand-crank a generator that turns on lights—and more lights. (All photos courtesy of Henry Ford Museum.) “Made in America”at the Henry Ford Museum 391 The planners and designers wanted the space to appear inviting, sometimes glitzy, and user-friendly. A colorful array of American-built products loops around the front portion of the exhibit on an overhead conveyor. Like so many angels in heaven, around and around go a water heater, toilet, wagon, hip boot, chair, fender, hood, bicycle frame, and kitchen sink (just to name a few). Scaled-down power-transmission towers carry overhead fiber-optic lines that are ablaze with neon color. And not to forget the youngsters in the audience, twenty-seven colorful, Fig. 2.—Interactive devices like a touch-screen computer put even the youngest visitor at the controls of an electric power plant. 392 Larry Lankton cartoon-like labels adorn the exhibit and explain, in terms equally simplistic and exuberant, why something was important or how it worked. These labels employ a cast of cute, politically correct kids (fat boys and skinny boys, girls in pants and girls in dresses, and children of all races) to get their messages across. The intellectual range of the exhibit is most easily summarized by scanning the titles of many of the smaller units that go together to make the whole. The “Making Things” section starts things offand includes as key parts “Modern Manufacturing, 1960 to the Present,” “Managing Industry, 1900 to the Present,” “Mass Production, 1900 to...
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Mar 2, 2009
Natalia Radywyl 
