New England Air Museum (review)

One is immediately aware of one's environment when walking into the gallery of the New England Air Museum (NEAM), a private, nonprofit institution located in Windsor Locks, Connecticut, adjacent to Bradley International Airport. The distinct aroma of airplanes—kerosene, lubricants, metal—pervades the exhibits. With more than one hundred aircraft ranging from an early home-built copy of a Curtiss pusher (where the propellers are set behind the pilot and "push" the airplane) to supersonic military fighters, the NEAM's collection provides a comprehensive survey of the contributions of people from Connecticut and greater New England to the development of aviation. Ohio, where Wilbur and Orville Wright invented and built the first successful heavier-than-air airplane in the rear of their bicycle sales and repair shop, and North Carolina, where they achieved the first four successful flights in that airplane at Kill Devil Hill on December 17, 1903, are famed for their aviation history. But the NEAM shows that the aviation history of New England, which boasts firms such as Pratt & Whitney, Sikorsky, Kaman, and United Technologies, is significant in its own right and worthy of interpretation and preservation.

Airplanes are difficult artifacts for a museum to exhibit. Even a small aircraft is a large object, and incorporating aircraft into exhibits that provide visitors a more comprehensive understanding than technical specifications is a challenging undertaking. The NEAM's three hangars demonstrate these complexities, but they also provide the institution the space in which to adapt exhibits to be appealing and educational for all visitors, not just aviation enthusiasts. The NEAM has an annual budget of approximately $1.5 million, ten professional staff, and nearly 150 volunteers to achieve its mission of "presenting the story of aviation, the human genius that made it possible and the profound effects that it has had on the way in which we live."¹ The story of aviation developed along two major, often crosspollenating tracks—civilian and military—and this is reflected in the NEAM's physical arrangement.

The NEAM has two large exhibit hangars with multiple airplanes (divided between civil and military aviation) and a smaller, third hangar that holds a World War II-era Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber, the same model of airplane as the Enola Gay, from which US Army Air Forces Colonel Paul Tibbets and his crew dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. A small gallery with hands-on materials for children connects the civil and B-29 spaces. With most of its exhibits being large wheeled vehicles, the NEAM is able to rotate airplanes on and off exhibit and can also modify the galleries to make space for special events or facility rentals. The museum also includes a facility in which volunteers restore airplanes for exhibition and a storage building for airplanes not presently on display. NEAM is fortunate to have an especially vibrant corps of volunteers working on airplane restoration. A small number of aircraft are parked outside the exhibition hangars. Airplanes are maintained as artifacts, not as flyable vehicles. The museum allows visitors to sit in the cockpits of several different aircraft, providing visitors a visceral way to get a first-hand impression of an airplane as a pilot's workplace. Panel exhibits on a variety of regional aviation topics are located around the airplanes, and smaller spaces contain exhibits on ballooning, pioneers of early aviation (including a rare 1910 engine from a Wright Company Model B airplane, of interest to this Dayton-based reviewer), and interactive materials aimed at children. The facility also offers visitors a gift shop that offers a broad selection of used and out-of-print books on aviation history in addition to more expected sales items.

Recognizing that many of its panel exhibits are ignored by visitors and volunteers alike, the NEAM is at the beginning of a projected five-year project of reinterpretation. Museum staff note the need for exhibit changes by using a large exhibit on Igor Sikorsky's (1889-1972) life and career as...