The Henry Ford Museum has announced that a small piece of Metro’s Dorothy Peyton Gray Transportation Library & Archive will be part a new permanent exhibit at their institution.
The Henry Ford is a family-oriented educational complex in Dearborn Michigan.
This National Historic Landmark is the nation’s “largest indoor-outdoor history museum,” holding 1 million artifacts and 25 million documents spanning the ingenuity, resourcefulness and innovation of America.
In existence since 1906, the museum complex now attracts 1.6 million visitors every year — thanks to some of the most iconic pieces of Americana in its collection.
These include the bus on which Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat, Abraham Lincoln’s chair from Ford’s Theatre, John F. Kennedy’s presidential limosine, the Wright Brothers’ home and cycle shop, and Thomas Edison’s Menlo Park laboratory.
The museum’s mission is to provide unique educational experiences based on authentic objects, stories, and lives from America with the purpose of inspiring people to learn from the past to help shape a better future.
One of those unique educational experiences is the overhaul of their permanent “Automobile in American Life” exhibit.
When it reopens in early 2012, it will be known as “Driving America!”
The exhibit is being re-tooled to better communicate the story of American automotive transportation.
The Henry Ford contacted the Library to request inclusion of this historic image of “Yellow Cars” in the National Metals scrapyard in Long Beach after Los Angeles’ streetcar system began to be dismantled.
We consider it an honor to have our historic public transit legacy included in such a high-profile transportation exhibit.
More behind-the-scenes exhibit information can be found here.