Western Reserve Historical Society reopens lower gallery; Cars by Twilight returns after two years

Posted September 18, 2013 in Articles

Author: Dave Arnold

Western Reserve Historical Society Chief Operating Officer Kelly Falcone stood on a staircase between an upper gallery renovation of the Crawford Auto Aviation Museum and a new lower gallery museum crew applying the finishing touches to its latest historical celebration: the REVolution Exhibit.

"The Crawford Auto Aviation collection is one of our core collections, telling a story of transportation history that really no one else in northeast Ohio can do," Falcone said.

The unveiling of the new exhibit is Friday, Sept. 20 at 6 p.m. It will be open to the public for the first time since the renovation of the upper gallery. The event to celebrate the new exhibit is entitled Cars by Twilight and will include ride opportunities in a 1962 pink Cadillac.

"Cars by Twilight gives people the first peek, actually, at the entire Crawford wing of the history center open for the first time in two years," Falcone said.

"In 2011 we said good-bye to the cars in a Cars by Twilight event and they weren't really sure when they would be seeing the collection again, so we're so happy to bring back the Cars by Twilight. It’s an exhibit preview with food trucks, entertainment, but the big story of course, is to see all of the collection back reinstalled."

Derek Moore, the Fredrick C. and Kathleen S. Crawford Museum's curator of transportation history, has been overseeing many of the most recent, rare vehicle acquisitions, as well as the attention to detail to the lower gallery's new exhibit floor. It will not be your usual chronologically display-approach to the cars, trucks and motorcycles.

"The new exhibit entitled REVolution actually has seven sections to it, sections that look at things like the invention and design of the automobile, the need for speed; basically racing stories with the automobile. We also have a section entitled Road Trip that talks about early travel and what it took to travel, and a number of other sections that really tell more detailed stories about the automobile, its development and really its impact on American culture and our society," said Moore.

For more information about the event, go herehttp://www.wrhs.org/calendar/NEW_Wings_Wheels_Weekend_Saturday

Original Article: http://www.newsnet5.com/dpp/news/local_news/oh_cuyahoga/Western-Reserve-Historical-Society-reopens-l