After 21 years as a curator and educator at Henry Ford
Museum & Greenfield Village, Bill Pretzer recently
became director of the Museum of Cultural & Natural
History as well as Director of the Museum Studies
Program and Associate Professor of History at Central
Michigan University.
While at Henry Ford Museum, he developed
exhibits such as “Thomas A. Edison’s Menlo Park
Laboratory” (1987), “Made in America: The History of
Industrial America” (1992), “Rediscovering Buckminster
Fuller’s Dymaxion House” (1999), and “’On Higher
Ground’: African America Art and Literature from the
Collection of Walter O. Evans” (2001), and “With Liberty
and Justice for All” (2006), featuring the Rosa Parks
bus, which he acquired for the museum in 2001.
Bill
was instrumental in the creation of the Henry Ford
Academy, a public charter high school on the grounds of
the museum and village and in the development of other
collaborative school programs, including the Crestwood
High School Museum History class and the Youth
Mentorship Program. He was the project director of a
NEH-funded Landmarks of American History Teacher
workshop in 2005 and 2006.
In addition to museum-sponsored publications
on Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and industrial history, he
is the author of articles and book chapters on design
history, museum practice, technology education, and the
history of labor and technology in the printing trade.
He recently participated in a UNESCO-sponsored
conference on technical-vocational education and
sustainability held in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
Bill received his BA from Stanford
University in 1972 and his Ph.D. from Northern Illinois
University in 1986.
Contact us at:
103 Rowe Hall
Central Michigan University
Mt. Pleasant, Michigan 48859
(989)774-3829
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here to contact us by email
