2026 NAAM Conference - Reimagining the Road Ahead

Presentation from 5 industry leaders looking at the future of automotive museum exhibitions and experiences, followed by a lengthy Q&A to help new and seasoned professionals guide their museum experiences.

Presenters: Nick LaCasse, Executive Director Gilmore Car Museum, Jacob Fuller, Collections Manager Gilmore Car Museum, John Hansen, Executive Director Classic Car Club of American Museum, Matt Short, Exhibit Concepts, Alex Oliver, President DRAFT Agency

Automotive museum curators may have the seemingly simple task of putting vehicles into a proper cultural and historical perspective, but cars are large, complex objects that require the specialized skill to expertly blend into exhibitions that will both attract and hold a visitor’s attention. As simple and populist as they might be, automobiles pose greater challenges to museum exhibit designers than virtually any other large object. And although they are elephantine in proportion compared to civil war swords and masterwork paintings, the temptation to crowd vehicles in a room so tightly that only their frontal aspects can be viewed is often irresistible. It has been said that if everything is important then nothing is important, rendering a “less is more” approach to presenting vehicles in engaging exhibitions well worth considering. This session will explore this and other opportunities open to exhibit designers and managers, who are mandated to present vehicles in a context that invites both casual study by enthusiasts and detailed analysis by scholars in all realms.

In this session, the panelists will discuss the basics of grants for auto museums. They will explore what kinds of grants are available (private foundation, local, regional, state, and federal); how to find grant support; what information is needed; time and staff required; deliverables and the reporting process; and timelines. They will discuss the overall costs and benefits of grant writing efforts.

Inaddition, they will discuss the different kinds of grants available to help museums accomplish theirmission, including:
 How to get started with grant writing.
 How museums find the technical staff to identify, write, and submit grants.
 How to write grants that appeal to the granting agencies and how to reach out to officers,asking what works, what doesn’t, and asking for examples.
 Learning the “buzzwords” and syntax grantors prefer, and how to speak their language.
 How to keep your name out there, stay in touch, show passion and enthusiasm, even if youdo not get the grant the first time.
 Grants on capacity building to strengthen the foundational elements of a museum such asfunding for strategic planning, professional development for staff, or upgrades toadministrative systems.
 Grants on collections stewardship to find resources for proper storage, conservation, anddigitization, and digitization.
 Grants on public engagement and education to support the development of engaging newexhibits, innovative educational programs for local schools, or community outreachinitiatives that bring the museum’s stories beyond its walls.
 Grants on technological advancement to develop a user-friendly website, creating onlineexhibitions, or implementing a modern collections management system that makes theirholdings accessible to a wider audience.
 Grants on historic preservation and restoration, and operations. 
 Unrestricted grants and donations.
 Making yourself known to financial advisors.
 Owning their Candid, Charity Navigator, and GuideStar descriptions.
 Sustaining the institutional internal capabilities after a grant is over.

Automobile museums play a critical role in shaping how motorsports history is preserved, interpreted, and understood. Yet for decades, the contributions of women—as drivers, engineers, executives, designers, journalists, and innovators—have been underrepresented, fragmented, or entirely absent from institutional narratives. This session explores how museums can move beyond symbolic inclusion to meaningfully integrate women’s motorsports stories into collections, exhibitions, programming, and public engagement.

Drawing on the work and assets of Women in Motorsports North America (WIMNA), this panel will examine how museums can responsibly interpret women’s history in motorsports while meeting professional standards in curation, scholarship, and audience engagement. WIMNA has collaborated with museums, sanctioning bodies, and media partners to develop award-winning documentaries, exhibits, educational programs, and public forums that elevate overlooked stories while connecting historical legacy to contemporary relevance.

Panelists will share practical case studies and lessons learned, including:
•Identifying and acquiring women-centered artifacts, archives, and oral histories
•Navigating gaps in documentation and historical bias within existing collections
•Designing exhibits and programs that resonate with multigenerational and nontraditional audiences
•Leveraging partnerships with nonprofits, industry, and living legends to activate collections through programming, education, and digital storytelling.

The discussion will also address the evolving expectations of museum audiences, donors, and younger visitors—many of whom are seeking more inclusive, accurate, and engaging narratives. By examining both successes and challenges, this session aims to equip automobile museum professionals with actionable strategies to strengthen institutional relevance while honoring the full scope of motorsports history.

Attendees will leave with concrete ideas for exhibition planning, collections development, and community engagement, as well as a deeper understanding of how women’s motorsports stories can enhance—not silo—museum narratives. The session is designed to foster dialogue, encourage peer exchange, and inspire museums of all sizes to see inclusive storytelling as both a professional responsibility and strategic.

For years, the Education Department at LeMay – America's Car Museum (ACM) dreamed of forming a partnership with Tacoma Public Schools, in which every student had the opportunity to visit the Museum on a field trip and participate in a fun, standards-aligned, hands-on experience. In 2022, this dream became a reality with generous funding through a local grant, allowing every third grader in the district to visit for free.

This session will explore how shared goals, strategic planning, and external funding are combined to create meaningful, curriculum-aligned learning experiences for these students while advancing ACM’s educational mission.

The presentation will begin by outlining the context that led to the partnership. Faced with a desire to expand access to hands-on, experiential learning—particularly in STEAM-related subjects—the museum and school district identified overlapping needs and opportunities. Kelsey and Rebecca will discuss how early conversations shaped the partnership, including aligning museum resources with district curriculum standards, identifying priority student populations, and defining clear outcomes for both institutions.

The session will then examine the role of grant funding in launching and sustaining the collaboration. Attendees will learn how the partners identified appropriate funding sources, developed a compelling grant narrative, and structured a project plan that balanced educational impact with feasibility. The case study will highlight how grant support enabled program components such as transportation, educator training, hands-on workshops, digital resources, and evaluation tools that might otherwise have been inaccessible.

Next, the presentation will focus on program implementation and outcomes. The ACM Education Team will share insights into how the partnership functioned in practice, including communication strategies, scheduling logistics, and adjustments made in response to classroom realities. The case study will also address assessment methods used to measure student engagement, learning outcomes, and teacher satisfaction, offering data-driven reflections on what works and what requires revision (it will always be an ongoing process!).

Finally, the session will address challenges and lessons learned. Attendees will leave with practical takeaways on building effective cross-sector partnerships, leveraging grant funding strategically, and using museums as dynamic extensions of the classroom.

Learning Outcomes:
• Understand key components of a successful museum–school district partnership
• Gain insight into using grant funding to support educational collaboration
• Identify strategies for implementation, evaluation, and sustainability

For this innovative session type, we will hear 4, 15 minute presentations before breaking out into smaller groups. Each attendee will choose a leader to follow for the remaining 30 minutes allocated for this session. This will give attendees a chance to get more in depth information on their preferred topic or even visit more than 1 of the 4 speakers.  



Topics included:

World Forum for Motor Museums 2026 Conference - France- Speaker Robert Signom III, America's Packard Museum and Jon Murden, National Motor Museum Trust. 
Dr Jon Murden joined the National Motor Museum Trust in 2021. With the museum marking its 50th anniversary in 2022, and the world of motoring experiencing changes that are the most fundamental since the late 19th century, the National Motor Museum Trust is working with Trustees, supporters, staff and stakeholders on a transformational five-year strategic plan and, as Chief Executive, Jon will contribute to this exciting plan and have overall responsibility for its implementation.

During his 12 years at Dorset Museum as Executive Director, Jon oversaw its transformation, including the redevelopment of its galleries, interpretation and storage facilities, and delivering such exciting temporary exhibitions as the multi-award winning Dippy on Tour: A Natural History Adventure.

Jon analyzed labor relations in post-war British motor manufacturing for his PhD and is a graduate of Mediaeval and Modern History at the University of Birmingham, spends much of his spare time running, maintaining and restoring his small collection of classic cars.

Robert Signom III was unanimously selected by the Board of Trustees as the Curator of The Citizens’ Motorcar Company, America’s Packard Museum in July of 2019. He became Executive Director in April of 2022. He is a life member of Packard Automobile Classics, as well as a member of the Antique Automobile Association of America, the Classic Car Club of America, and the Society of Automotive Historians. Rob became the youngest voting member of the Packard Automobile Classics’ Board of Trustees when he founded Tomorrow's Packard Owners in 1992. Rob also worked in Theatrical Production for over twenty years on countless productions, concerts, and musicals in New York and regionally. He is also an Eagle Scout, and a graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. He received his master’s degree in museum studies from Harvard University and wrote his thesis on Women in Automotive History. He is the Vice Chair of the World Forum for Motor Museums and is listed in Who’s Who North America.

Using Social Media to Drive Young Engagement - Speakers Mark Schettenhelm, Ford Piquette Museum, the Pontiac Transportation Museum and the Canadian Transportation Museum, and Sean Mathis, Founder, Miles Through Time Museum
Presentation will explore the role of social media in increasing awareness and engagement for car museums. During the session, panelists will discuss their firsthand experiences using various social media platforms, share tips on the types of content that successfully drive engagement, and outline strategies for converting online followers into museum visitors. We will also cover how museums can work with and leverage social media influencers.

Rough Sledding: Emergency Preparedness for Hazards, Weather, and Other Disasters - Speaker Tom Shinall, Director of Curatorial Services, Savoy Automobile Museum
In an area of unpredictable weather and other major harmful events, all museums need a comprehensive Emergency Preparedness plan that addresses safety for Fire, Flood/Snow, Tornadoes/Hurricanes, Extreme Temperatures, Earthquake, Infrastructural Outages, Severe Injury/Active Shooter, Etc. Those museums and their staff/volunteers must also have the training and supplies to activate that plan immediately when the emergency arises.  

How The Shelby American Collection Raises Over $3 Million Every Year with TapKat Sweepstakes - Speakers Annie Tukman and Steve Volk. In 2012, the Shelby American Collection in Boulder, Colorado was searching for a better way to raise funds. Years of hosting an annual gala left volunteers exhausted and produced only modest results. The organization needed a strategy that could generate meaningful revenue, grow its donor base, and raise awareness of its mission to preserve the history of Carroll Shelby and the Shelby American Team.

Executive Director Steve Volk proposed a bold idea: a fundraising raffle for a Shelby Mustang. He sourced the car, built a website, and launched the campaign. Interest surged, the donor database grew rapidly, and by the end of the fundraiser the museum raised over $100,000, enough to sustain operations for the entire year. However, while effective, raffles proved difficult to manage due to U.S. laws classifying them as gambling.

Seeking a better solution, the museum shifted to sweepstakes and saw extraordinary results. Today, the Shelby American Collection raises over $3 million annually through its sweepstakes, with a donor base that has grown from 800 people in 2016 to more than 105,000 donors. Recognizing the broader potential for growth, change, and transformation at auto museums, Steve co-founded TapKat to help nonprofits run compliant, successful sweepstakes, many of which will be represented at the NAAM Conference.

Presenter Bios:

Steve Volk is the Founder and CEO of TapKat Solutions, Inc., an online sweepstakes fundraising platform for nonprofits, and the Executive Director of the Shelby American Collection, a car museum in Boulder, Colorado dedicated to the preservation of Shelby racing history. With an underlying commitment to raising money for worthy causes, Steve is enthusiastic about connecting with nonprofit organizations who are ready to make a big difference in their annual raise with sweepstakes fundraising.

Annie Tukman is the Director of Sales at TapKat Solutions, Inc., and the Director of Development at the Shelby American Collection. She is passionate about helping nonprofits make the most of their sweepstakes fundraising strategy.

Automotive history and its stories are not told only through cars, but also through the automobilia and ephemera that accompany over a century of industrial and technological history. Thus, automotive archives and special collections hold a multitude of materials and media, each unique. This variegated approach to collecting is common in automotive museums and requires a wide range of resources, skills, and knowledge.

Automotive museums also differ in that their main artifacts are large vehicles that demand significant resources. This often leaves archives and non-vehicle collections without the required preservation and organization. The need for a professional and standalone archivist and archives department is often overlooked, even at some of the nation’s most well-regarded automotive museums. When your collections encompass everything in the museum that is not a car, it can be difficult, costly, and overwhelming to organize these differing materials and create the ideal conditions, standards, and procedures. Furthermore, these archives contain materials, metadata, and historical topics not often addressed by mainstream archival and museum standards.

This case study presentation will tell the story of two archivists tasked with organizing, preserving, standardizing, and making accessible 11,500 square feet of material collected over twenty years before they came on board. Before them, there was no professional archivist or collections management for these materials, and they were expected to build an archive from the ground up with little to no funding.

The Petersen’s archivists will examine their last nine years of archives management, including the decisions they made, their rationale, the problems encountered, solutions attempted, and mistakes often made. This session will touch on topics such as grant writing, building and storage issues, collections policy and management, digitization, environmental challenges, and staffing. The goal of this presentation is to demonstrate that, regardless of your museum's size, 1resources, or experience, all automotive archives face extreme challenges and that there are creative ways to meet them.

April 24 -25 is America's Packard Museum's Spring Fling event - social opportunities, tours, and educational sessions! This event is separate from the NAAM conference. Details, pricing, and tickets can be found here: https://www.americaspackardmuseum.org/2026-packard-spring-fling.

April 24 -25 is America's Packard Museum's Spring Fling event - social opportunities, tours, and educational sessions! This event is separate from the NAAM conference. Details, pricing, and tickets can be found here: https://www.americaspackardmuseum.org/2026-packard-spring-fling.