Henry Ford Museum to unveil new exhibition of classic cars


Workers at the Henry Ford Museum are busy setting up a major new exhibition of 130 historically significant cars and trucks.

Driving America opens on January 29 and focuses on the effect of the automobile on American culture through interactive touchscreen displays, artifacts, and personal accounts. There’s even a mobile diner from 1946 that will be serving classic American diner food.

Of course it’s the cars that are the main attraction. Ranging from the 1890s to the early 2000s, they include numerous innovative designs such as the Model T, the 1907 Rocket Stanley Steamer, and the 1973 Chrysler Newport, which at 19 feet long makes it look like a tank next to some of the miniature cars of today. Driving America doesn’t just look at Ford products; several cars are on loan from other collections and include rival companies such as Honda.

For more on the Henry Ford Museum, check out this article by Gadling’s very own Paul Brady.

Steamer photo courtesy Richard H. LeSesne.

Arab American National Museum examines legacy of 9/11

With the tenth anniversary of 9/11 just two days away, the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, is examining how the Arab-American community has been affected by the terrorist attacks.

U.S. Rising: Emerging Voices in post-9/11 America runs from September 8-11 and is a series of forums and events both in Detroit and Dearborn. On the actual anniversary of September 11, the museum will offer free entry all day.

In an interview with Art Daily, museum director Anan Ameri said the attacks were a “wake-up call” that showed just how little most people knew about the Arab-American community and how many bad stereotypes were out there. One response has been the virtual exhibit Reclaiming Identity: Dismantling Arab Stereotypes. This looks at the origins of various stereotypes and compares them to the reality.

Starting on Veterans Day, November 11, the museum will host the exhibition Patriots & Peacemakers: Arab Americans in Service to our Country. This exhibit will focus on the community’s role in the U.S. army, Peace Corps, and diplomatic service.

[Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons]

Inside Dearborn’s Henry Ford Museum

Outside downtown Detroit, in Dearborn, there’s a museum filled with airplanes and cars and farm implements and the most outlandish house ever conceived. Somehow, the bric a brac works, brought together as The Henry Ford Museum, an institution less focused on a particular moment or a particular discipline that the very idea of American innovation, financed by the inventor’s healthy curiosity-and bankroll.

Also here is an artificial town, Greenfield Village, a collection of notable buildings brought to Dearborn from across the country. One particularly telling structures is the Wright Brothers’ Cycle Shop, relocated from Dayton, Ohio, Ford’s nod to tinkerers who changed the course of history, experimenting with something completely new in a garage, just like he did with his Quadricycle, the world’s first car. (The museum has that too.)

Traveling the American Road – The Henry Ford Museum