August 29, 2008
TECHNOS QUARTERLY Fall 1996 Vol. 5 No. 3
The Ford Library and Museum
Sidebar for the Gerald R. Ford Interview
The Gerald R. Ford Library
The Gerald R. Ford Library is located on the Ann Arbor campus of the University of Michigan. A repository for 20 million documents and a half million audiovisual items, the Library also offers programs to make these materials accessible. Researchers utilize PRESNET (a computer database that describes more than 50,000 folder titles and collections), finding aids (detailed narrative summaries created by archivists), and archivists' assistance to find documents on their topics.
The Ford Library is one of 12 Presidential libraries and museums that are part of the National Archives and Records Administration. Other Presidents so honored are George Bush, Jimmy Carter, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Herbert Hoover, Lyndon Baines Johnson, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Harry S. Truman.
The Gerald R. Ford Museum
The Ford Museum, which opened in 1981 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, is only a short walk from the site of Ford's first campaign headquarters in 1948 (the subject of a Ford Museum display). Visitors can also walk through an exact replica (with artifacts) of the White House Oval Office in 1976, when Ford occupied it. Along with these permanent exhibits, the museum offers a succession of temporary exhibits that draw upon the entire Presidential libraries system, the Smithsonian Institution, the National Archives, and others. With a focus on public programming, the museum, which focuses on public programming, also hosts special events, naturalization ceremonies for new citizens, and Fourth of July celebrations. In April 1996, the museum unveiled a new exhibit, 41 Men: From Washington to Clinton, a display of personal objects from each of the U.S. Presidents. The privately funded Ford Museum is currently undergoing a $4 million makeover that reflects both historical interpretation and new museum technologies, as well as a glimpse of the 70s culture—complete with disco and polyester suits. The redo, which is being constructed offsite to permit the museum to remain open, will feature an interactive White House situation room that lets tourists make foreign-policy decisions, a mixed-media multiscreen treatment of Watergate (complete with a burglary tool from the break-in), and an Oval Office sound-and-light show. The “grand reopening” is scheduled for April 1997.
Visit the Gerald R. Ford Museum online at: http://www.ford.utexas.edu/.
Return to the Gerald R. Ford Interview TECHNOS Quarterly article.