The Henry Ford’s new exhibit, Driving America, offers visitors a new way of looking at the history and impact of the automobile on American life. It also offers visitors a new way of seeing our car collection. Last winter, photographer Mark Harmer of Midcoast Studio in Troy, Michigan, spent two months photographing 120 (!) of our vehicles.

Nearly all of the photography work was done on the floor of Henry Ford Museum.  Midcoast set up a temporary photo studio using a portable light box, shown here.

Midcoast photographer Mark Harmer sits at the computer while his two assistants set up the lighting and position the backdrop panels and camera for a profile shot of the Old 16, a 1906 race car.

One of our conservators adjusts the tire pressure on Old 16 in preparation for the photo session.

In addition to cars, several carriages, trucks and even a streetcar were photographed. Here, the crew gets ready to shoot the Concord Coach.

The Concord Coach

Six detail shots were taken of each car, in addition to full body shots.  This is a detail shot of Old 16’s engine.

Beautiful!

Cars that were all ready for their photo session were lined up in the back of the museum, waiting to be rolled under the lights.

"I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. Harmer!"

Thirty-four of the vehicles also had a Spheron photo session. The photographer  placed a camera on a slowly rotating stand inside the vehicle, which enables viewers to explore the car from the inside. The Spheron views, as well as the other shots, are available in the Vehicle Viewer interactive in Driving America and will also soon be available on our online collections website.

A car is readied for its Spheron shoot. The vehicle was shrouded to block the view outside of the windows.

But it wasn’t this easy for every vehicle; several large trucks, the presidential vehicles, and the Goldenrod race car were too large to move under the light box and had to be shot in place.  These photo sessions occurred over the course of five nights and lasted until early morning.

Moving the light box for an evening photo session

The light box and backdrop panels positioned around the Reagan presidential limousine. The railings and signs all had to be removed, then put back by the next morning.

On the last night of the project, the crew posed in front of the Dodge Airflow Tank Truck under the light box.

Great work, Midcoast!

Be sure to check out all of Mark Harmer’s photographs on our online collections website - there’s a good chance one of your favorite vehicles has gotten the “Midcoast treatment” and can be explored inside and out for the first time.  Enjoy!

In her twenty-five years at The Henry Ford, Judy Endelman, director of the Benson Ford Research Center, has learned to love cars.

Driving America will offer a brand-new opportunity for kids to pretend they’re auto mechanics. And what better place for this to occur than inside the service bay of the Texaco station—a space that’s been closed to the public since this historic building was brought to Henry Ford Museum in 1987?

The Texaco Station, in its previous iteration.

Inside this newly-opened space, kids will be able to change tires and mufflers, check fluids and filters, and use a creeper to glide under a ¾-scale, 1960s-era car. Our Education team has made sure that these activities are safe, easy to understand, and age-appropriate.

Hands-on activity, geared for ages 4-8

But the curators got a different assignment:  create the atmosphere of an auto garage from the 1960s era using real artifacts. We are, after all, a history museum. We pride ourselves on authenticity. And we wanted to include real objects that adults could relate to and talk about with kids who had never heard of things like rust-proofing.

But how to go about creating that atmosphere?

We looked at old pictures of service bay interiors (there weren’t many). We shared our memories (or those of our husbands or fathers) of old auto garage interiors. We considered what was available from our own collection and what could be acquired through outside sources. (The designation “NOS” on eBay turned out to be a goldmine to the world of “new old stock” auto accessories.)

Just furnishing the space as a look-in would have been easy, but the ultimate challenge was that people would be entering this space, potentially touching and interacting with these items. So we determined that some things would be placed low and would invite touching (like the hubcaps), while rarer items, like the license plates, would be placed higher up.

It’s sometimes hard for us literal-minded curators to think about how to furnish a space that’s “just pretend”…but that’s what we tried to do here.

Do you have any memories of old full-service stations like our Texaco one, or remember hearing details of them from your parents or grandparents? Share them in the comments section below – and be sure to check out the Texaco Service Bay when “Driving America” opens this Sunday, January 29!

Donna Braden, Curator of Public Life, is always looking forward to her next unusual assignment.

The coming of a New Year is a great time to set resolutions, and for 2012, The Henry Ford has picked at least one doozy that we are very excited to share!

Over the course of the year, we will be digitizing our most “significant” icons in each of the core categories in our collections — and making those available on our collections website to anyone who is interested.

So what does that mean, and why are we so delighted about it?

Digitization is the process of making photos and information about the collections of The Henry Ford available online. In a way, this is a process that dates back to the founding of the institution, as artifacts have been catalogued and photographed over the years for internal purposes.

However, the information and images we’ve gathered and the ways in which we’ve stored those for our own usage don’t necessarily equate to the robust web presentation that we want to share with the world— so we have been spending a lot of time updating and standardizing catalog records, taking great new photographs of the collection, and writing brief narratives on the purpose and meaning of each object.

This is all part of a big project we’ve been calling CAN-DO: Collections Access Network for Digital Objects.

We really got going in earnest with this effort in 2011, with the bulk of the objects digitized either in or related to the new Driving America exhibit, which opens at the end of January. The Henry Ford obviously has very strong transportation collections, and this means that right now our digitized collections contain everything from the very rare and beautiful Bugatti…

1931 Bugatti Type 41 Royale Convertible, from the collections of The Henry Ford. Only six Royales were ever made.

…to an iconic Charles Sheeler photograph of the Ford Rouge plant in the late 1920s…

Open Hearth Building at Ford Rouge Plant, photographed by Charles Sheeler, 1927, from the collections of The Henry Ford.

…and everything in between.

"How to CB" Phonograph Record, 1976, from the collections of The Henry Ford. “Slanguage” — get it?

As 2011 began winding down, we started to think about what we would digitize in 2012. The Henry Ford has an embarrassment of riches in its collections, including hundreds of thousands of 3D objects and about 25 million 2D artifacts housed in the Benson Ford Research Center. Digitizing it all will be a multi-year, if not multi-decade, effort. What, we asked ourselves, should be our focus in 2012?

The answer was obvious: We need to make sure the public has digital access to the most “significant” artifacts at The Henry Ford. I put the term “significant” in quotation marks purposely, as significance has multiple meanings. Few could argue that an artifact like the city bus on which Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat is not a significant historical object. It is also institutionally unique. Many museums have civil rights artifacts, but there is only one Rosa Parks bus, and the only place to find it is at The Henry Ford.

The Rosa Parks Bus, an American icon from the collections of The Henry Ford. Photograph by Michelle Andonian.

The other dimension of “significance” is personal resonance. Certainly the Rosa Parks bus has personal significance for many people. But there’s also a pretty hefty degree to which personal significance diverges. For example, I wouldn’t necessarily expect this Buck Rogers poster to have personal significance for a large percentage of the public.

Buck Rogers Comic Strip Characters and Space Vehicles, Cocomalt Premium, circa 1934, from the collections of The Henry Ford. Featuring a space pterodactyl!

For me, though, this happens to be one of my very favorite collections objects that we’ve digitized thus far. It features a space pterodactyl, a disintegrator ray, rocketships, and many spacemen in dapper outfits, all illustrated with bright colors and fantastic graphic detail. These all happen to be things that I enjoy (space pterodactyls being a new but noteworthy addition to the list), so to me, this is particularly interesting.

We’ve been having a lot of interesting conversations about all the aspects of “significance” and how they relate to the collections of The Henry Ford, and have started throwing out ideas and making lists. Over the course of 2012, you will see these objects begin to show up on our collections website, but you’ll also hear about them in other ways — via blog posts from staff members, in the curators’ Pics of the Month and any other ways we can think of to share the stories that these objects tell.

We could not be more excited to start this project, and hope you are excited about it as well. Check our collections website frequently to visit your old favorites from the collections and discover new ones!

Ellice Engdahl is The Henry Ford’s new Digital Collections Initiative Manager, which she thinks is quite possibly the coolest job ever — even if it’s a hazard of the job that her favorite collections object changes about ten times a day.

photo credit: Roger4336

Driving America is the story of us and our relationships with cars – whether it’s as a driver, consumer or just plain lover of cars. And to celebrate that story, we want YOUR story.

Will you share the details of your first car with us?

Click on this link to submit your story. Tell us all about it: How did you get it? What unique quirks did it have? What made it special to you?

It could be the first car you owned, the first car you rode in…and if you have any photos or video, you can share that too!

“My First Car” stories will be featured on our new Driving America website, so keep them coming…whether it was a gem or a clunker, we can’t wait to hear about it!

The future Driving America exhibit is slowly starting to take shape!

Some of the changes are quite subtle, like the pathways across the exhibit…

…or the structure of the spine…

…while others, like the removal of a billboard from behind Lamy’s Diner, are pretty noticeable!

Opening up this space will allow us to provide a future prep area for offering food options inside Lamy’s.

There is still much work to be done, but it’s exciting to see the exhibit’s form start to come together!

Among all this construction work, our digitization efforts continue on the east side of the museum – check out this blog post from the photography company we’re working with, Midcoast Studios, with more pictures from their work with us!

After a few weeks of being “tuned up,” our hot dog interactive is back in action near the Weinermobile – hop in and dress yourself up with ketchup, mustard and now mayonnaise and chopped onions!

(And don’t forget to look up at the mirror to see how you look!)

On the flip side, it’s the last weekend for a few fun experiences in Henry Ford Museum:

• Record a radio jingle in the Silver/Pewter aisle for Women’s History Month
• See the Daytona 500 owner’s trophy, on display in front of cars from our racing collection
• Take a free museum highlights tour, led by one of our master presenters

So stop in, sing a tune, take a tour and check out the beautiful trophy and video footage from Trevor Bayne’s historic win!

Have a great weekend!

It’s one of our most frequently-asked questions these days: While the transportation exhibit is in the process of being upgraded to our new Driving America exhibit, does that mean that all of the cars are off display?

Definitely not!

There is still a strong number of vehicles that you can see during your visit to Henry Ford Museum – they’re just in a different place than you might have last seen them (well, most of them, anyway).

So consider this your guide to our automotive collection during the upgrade! (Or, as I like to call it, “The Tanker Stands Alone.” Keep reading – you’ll see why.)

If you’re entering the museum through the clock tower entrance (where you can see the DC-3 as you enter), you’ll first notice Henry Ford’s Quadricycle – the first car he ever built, in that tiny Bagley Avenue shed in Detroit – on display near the entrance to what will become Driving America.

Further to the right, you can explore our collection of presidential vehicles in their familiar location – those that transported Ronald Reagan, John F. Kennedy, Dwight Eisenhower, Franklin Roosevelt and Theodore Roosevelt.

This week, we also moved the Texaco tanker truck adjacent to Theodore Roosevelt’s brougham and the Holiday Inn sign, as we continue construction on the area in front of the Texaco station and the Drive-In Theater.

From there, swing around the Allegheny locomotive to see a whole string of vehicles, including the Bugatti Royale, Chrysler Turbine, Chevrolet Bel-Air convertible (the turquoise-colored one that was previously in front of the McDonald’s sign and Lamy’s Diner) and lots more. Travel a little further, and you’ll find several more – a Thunderbird, El Dorado, Studebaker and even the Safety Car!

From the entrance nearest to the IMAX (and, of course, the Wienermobile!), you can find a few key cars from our racing collection: the Goldenrod, the Mark IV, Henry Ford’s Sweepstakes car and “Ohio” George’s Willys Gasser. And through this Sunday, March 27, there’s also a very special display in front of the Sweepstakes – the 2011 Daytona 500 owner’s trophy!

And between the Your Place In Time and Made In America exhibits, you’ll find the Mustang prototype and Mustang serial #1, with one of our newest display vehicles – winner of the Progressive Insurance Automotive X PRIZE competition, the Edison2 Very Light Car – just a short walk away, nearest to the Fully Furnished exhibit.

Come check out these vehicles on your next visit, and let us know: Which one is your favorite? If you could drive one for a day, which one would you choose?

An upgraded exhibit deserves an upgraded name, right?

So when our transportation exhibit (formerly known as the Automobile in American Life exhibit) re-opens in early 2012, its new official name will be…

Driving America!

You can already see signs with this new design scheme beginning to be put into place across the exhibit, so keep your eyes peeled for more sneak previews as we roll out (ha!) more details of this transformed exhibit.

Meanwhile, our conservation team is hard at work to make sure our automotive collection is ready to shine, not only for the exhibit itself but also for our digitization efforts – check out this short video with conservator Clara Deck as she explains how we’re working on vehicles like the 1914 Detroit Electric (Clara Ford’s personal vehicle!) and the Mustang prototype (which another of our conservators, Derek Moore, is working on in the below photo in our temporary photo studio).

This week, we also completely disassembled the projection booth and screen of the Drive-In Theater, for its new entrance re-orientation inside the finished exhibit. It’s the first time since the original exhibit was introduced in the late 1980s that you can see all the way to the back of the museum – at least, for the next little while!

What do you think of the new exhibit name? How do you think vehicles will be presented under this new name?

This week’s update is all about computers and carpentry!

As we complete demolition of the old “spine” (the winding platform of cars located in the center of the exhibit), we have a carpenter on site to start blocking and decking for reinforcement of the new spine. This will help us add mechanical lifts, which will eventually be used to help our facilities team address lighting and other maintenance needs as well as the upkeep of artifacts.

Electricians will also be doing initial explorations and layout for new electrical needs for the updated exhibit, including dozens of interactive touch screens! Through these screens, you’ll be able to learn so much more about the artifacts in front of you than just the vehicle specifics of wheelbase and length (although this will be part of the information offered as well) – you’ll be able to find out more about their histories, why they’re significant to the American driving experience and zoom in on specific features of the cars.

In order to do this, we’re “digitizing” many of our vehicles – photographing them, then converting the photographs to digital images that will allow for greater exploration. A photography team is set up near the back of the museum and photographing cars nearly every day; if you head to the east side of the museum, you can see some of this in action – it’s a pretty neat process!

We’ll also continue repairing our historic teakwood floor, this time in areas where we’ve removed previous platforms for cars, such as the 1937 Cord convertible, and continuing demolition of the steel framework that held up the big screen in the Drive-In Theater.

What other information would you like to see included in the digitized versions of the cars for our future touch screens?

As we make more progress in our transportation exhibit upgrade, our construction team is charging ahead!

This week, work began on the Drive-In Theater and Lamy’s Diner, both of which are now closed for construction.

Lamy’s Diner will be staying right where it is on the floor, but with some really exciting new opportunities in this upgraded exhibit – specifically, you’ll be able to eat in the diner for the first time since it’s been in our collections! So many visitors over the years have told us they would like this experience, and we’re excited to be able to finally offer it. Get ready to enjoy some light snacks, coffee and other beverages at the booths or counter!

In addition, we’ll be building a “patio” alongside Lamy’s, which will not only hold more seating for dining but also provide wheelchair and stroller access to this historic diner for the first time.

The Drive-In Theater is also undergoing some changes; for one, the entrance will be flipped around! When completed, you’ll enter the theater from inside the transportation exhibit (rather than its previous entrance near the Texaco station), and the sides will be more enclosed to allow for a better viewing experience once inside.

Keep looking for weekly updates here in the blog as this exhibit progresses, and if you can, stop in to see them for yourself!

What part of the updated transportation exhibit are you looking forward to seeing?