“Technology…will continue to be of major interest to the Museum, but the Museum’s name will no longer suggest that we are involved in a study of technology for its own sake or regard technology and history as separable.”
—Roger G. Kennedy, NMAH Director, 1980
Changing the Museum’s Name
On October 13, 1980, President Jimmy Carter signed legislation changing the name of the Museum of History and Technology (MHT) to the National Museum of American History (NMAH). The name change embodied a vision for the museum that coalesced its technical side with its history of the American experience.
Director Roger Kennedy, who initiated the change, declared that the Museum would no longer be home to the “Hall of Iron and Steel” or the “Hall of Transportation.” Technology would instead be embedded in history, as suggested by exhibitions with titles like “Engines of Change,” “Information Age,” or “Science in American Life.”
Though not all of the Museum’s curators supported the name change, the new focus opened exploration into the complicated dynamics among science, technology, and society. Founding ideologies of technological progress fell out of favor. New exhibition perspectives sometimes encountered public controversy, reflecting larger tensions in American society.
A temporary banner proclaimed the Museum’s new identity.
Roger G. Kennedy
