0 Hot Rod Lincoln: NAAM Conference 2013

by Nancy DeWitt
© Fountainhead Antique Auto Museum

The Fountainhead Antique Auto Museum is proud to be a member of the National Association of Automobile Museums (NAAM). This group of enthusiastic and dedicated professionals meets once a year to share resources, network and broaden our knowledge about museum operations. This year's event was graciously hosted by the Smith Collection Museum of American Speed (MAS) in Lincoln, Nebraska.

As usual, I had to take the awful, 1:30 AM red-eye flight out of Fairbanks to make my connection in Seattle. Both my flight to Minneapolis and the one to Lincoln were delayed because of a blizzard in MN. Still, I arrived enough in advance to drive over to Grand Island the following morning to check out the amazing spectacle of snow goose and sandhill crane migration through that area. I've never seen anything like it!

NAAM conference attendees
Courtesy of the Museum of American Speed

The conference started that evening and was followed by three days of seminars and field trips. Presentations covered a wide variety of topics such as docent training, historic vehicle preservation techniques, social media, digital imaging and collections management. We spent one day touring the Strategic Air and Space Museum, Gary Kuck's private automobile collection and the MAS. I've posted several photos from latter here, including some of pedal cars from their huge collection.

On the last day of the conference I was elected to the NAAM board of directors. I am also chairing the NAAM conference scholarship committee. If your museum is not a NAAM member, or you would just like to support the work of this fine association, please consider joining! The next conference will be held at the Petersen Museum in Los Angeles March 25-29, 2014, in conjunction with the World Forum for Motor Museums. I'm wondering if they can top the cool door prizes awarded in Lincoln, though. I'm not a Husker fan, but that cornhead is a hoot!