The restlessness of Americans has been documented by two University of Delaware alumni in a new permanent exhibit, "America on the Move," at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.
Janet F. Davidson, AS '00PhD, is the historian and the curator of the exhibit, as well as the coauthor, with Michael S. Sweeney, of the companion book by National Geographic, On the Move--Transportation and the American Story.
Roger White, AS '77M, curator of several key portions of "America on the Move," also contributed research and collected objects--among them, a 40-foot section of pavement from that American icon Route 66.
"The history of transportation is a metaphor for America," says Davidson, a native of Wales who lives in Washington with her husband, fellow UD alumnus Brian Kerrigan, AS '00.
"Transportation is a great hook for getting people interested in history," White, who grew up in Maryland and lives in that state's Anne Arundel County, says.
In separate interviews, Davidson and White describe how the exhibit came to be and the stories the show tells about a nation built on voyages, journeys and an almost primal desire to see what's around the next bend, at the next stop or just over the horizon.
Davidson, whom the Smithsonian hired in 2000 to curate the show, says "America on the Move" began taking shape in the late 1990s. The discussions began in conjunction with plans to freshen up Transportation Hall, which had a terrific collection of objects but otherwise had sat virtually unchanged since opening in 1964.
The consensus was that the revamped facility should be redone "as a series of times and places," Davidson says.
Transportation "is something we all deal with every day," she continues. "We wanted to let people see how we got to where we are ... because as we develop and sprawl, we're erasing the past from the landscape."
With objects ranging from 1870s locomotives to 1890s streetcars, from vintage automobiles to a 1930s "tourist cabin"--not to mention a house trailer, a school bus and a Buick dealership--the show is a visual feast.
But, the Smithsonian also wanted to put transportation in the context of commerce, the changing national landscape and the experience of individual Americans. Hence, it includes often-touching human stories, ranging from Henry Ford to Merle Haggard to Victor Green, who published a popular guidebook advising African Americans where they could eat and spend the night while traveling, without fear of encountering bias or worse.
Such material, along with all the trains, planes and automobiles, is "a wonderful way to add richness and texture to the past," Davidson says. "We hope our visitors will think about how transportation has shaped where they live."
When the curators learned that the Oklahoma transportation department was abandoning a two-lane segment of fabled Route 66 that dated to 1932, "we convinced them to donate a piece of it," Davidson says. The concrete section was excavated, loaded onto a flatbed truck and driven--by representatives of an Oklahoma truck-driving school--the 1,400 miles to Washington. Now a centerpiece of the exhibit, the Route 66 artifact is arranged so visitors can walk on one lane of the celebrated highway while reading a "rail" of text and admiring a vintage car and truck on the other lane.
For Davidson, who also earned her master's degree at Delaware, "one of the most wonderful things" about the project was the hands-on experience. At one point, she went to Watsonville, Calif., to see apple orchards of the sort that figured prominently in the railroading history of the state and the nation by encouraging the development of refrigerated rail cars.
So why are the histories of transportation and the nation so intertwined? "I think it has a lot to do with the size and scope of the country," Davidson says. "I also think the issue of how transportation affects people cuts across time."
White describes himself as having grown up with "more than a healthy fascination with trains and cars." He came to the Smithsonian in 1981, after three years at the B&O Museum in Baltimore.
"Most of what I've done here has focused on the social history of the automobile," White says, "how it became integrated into American life in so many respects, how it became a consumer product, how Main Street became auto-friendly and how the nation as a whole is a little bit conflicted about the automobile."
Until "America on the Move" opened last year, Transportation Hall was essentially "a roomful of cars and a roomful of locomotives. It was extremely popular, but it didn't have a story line," he says. Regardless of the sleek beauty of the beloved vehicles on display, "America on the Move" is "not really about vehicles, but what they meant," White says. For example, the 1903 Winton touring car that made the first cross-country trip (celebrated in a 2003 documentary by Ken Burns) was a great object. "But, the depth wasn't there" in the original display, White explains, so the curators "humanized the car and gave it depth and meaning."
"America on the Move" now includes everything from information about the driver and passenger (Vermonters H. Nelson Jackson and Sewall K. Crocker) to the goggles sported by "Bud," the photogenic little dog that accompanied the men on their unprecedented adventure--an adventure, White points out, that did nothing less than "give the nation the idea of long-distance travel by car."
"It's not just a matter of putting in words and pictures," he says. "It's not entertainment. It's real history. You have to let the objects tell the story."
And, quite a story it is. "America on the Move," the largest show the museum ever has done, encompasses suburbanization, immigration, racism, shopping, the Depression, the Interstate road system, air pollution, trailer parks, "hot pillow" motels on the roadsides and the profound changes wrought by the internal combustion engine.
"We've moved into our cars," White observes. "We live in them all day."
Learn more about the exhibit at [http://americanhistory.si.edu/onthemove].
--Kevin Riordan