Swigger 2-3

"pageant of America"
a pageant is a crafted spectacle performance, like Buffalo Bill's Wide West show. Small communities create such events as tourist attractions, crafting their own narrative of their past (eg. starting with killing off native Americans)

the picture is another re-created village with a New England village green, this one started in 1927

Ford's collecting themes:

• simple traditional education, but combined with active learning
  
• birthplaces and domestic life
  
• successful people who started out from humble roots (but with virtuous families)
• included some (softened) African-American history, recognized George Washington Carver as his kind of inventor
  

Ford did what he wanted, hired no museum professionals or historians, defined authenticity however suited him

this museum has a dubious history, does it end up as a bad museum?

visitors initially were mostly local and regional, 1945 over 200,000

Ford's biography was a big part of the tour guide script

visitors wanted to buy things, but also challenged the history presented based on their own stereotypes

Every man his own historian