Barn Again! Celebrating an American Icon retired from service after a successful eight-year tour on February 4, 2006. The exhibition, which debuted in March 1997, visited 141 communities in 26 states. Four copies of Barn Again! will be permanently donated to four small museums. For more information, please visit our Detailed Schedule page.

Summary
The barn, like the town hall and the skyscraper, is a symbol of America. To traditional farmers, barns are the soul of the farm. To the general public, barns represent both our rural past and our agricultural present. They are monuments in the American landscape. Nevertheless, modern barns are no longer the centers of industrial and community life they once were. Traditional barns were not designed to store the enormous machinery and harvests of today's large-scale farms. While renovated barns continue to play a vital role in agriculture, many farmers now consider the traditional, time-honored structures obsolete. Barn Again! explores the barn as both a cultural and agricultural icon. It examines the building as an architectural structure and as a means of expressing beliefs about what our country was and could be. It looks at the origin and fate of the barn in its roles as warehouse, factory, and legend. What values do barns represent? What do various types of barns and building techniques say about farming and American society? How have changes in agricultural practices led to changes in barn design? What do barns tell us about our past? And our future?

Bolstered by program support and expertise from state humanities councils, rural communities plan local activities that celebrate their cultural and agricultural heritage. Across the country, Barn Again! brings record-breaking audiences to small town museums and generates interest in barn restorations, barn preservation workshops and architecture projects. In Ohio, the citizens of St. Paris (pop.1,742) even created a folk artists' "co-op " to welcome the Smithsonian and help contribute to the local economy. The exhibition was originally developed by Gregory Dreicer at the National Building Museum in collaboration with the National Trust for Historic Preservation and has been adapted for travel by SITES. Barn Again! is a registered trademark owned by the Meredith Corporation and the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Check out the web site for the BARN AGAIN! program from the National Trust for Historic Preservation and Successful Farming magazine. BARN AGAIN! is a national program that provides information to help owners of historic barns rehabilitate them and put them back to productive use on farms and ranches.

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