Break, Repair, Repeat

How does an 18th-century teapot with a repaired spout relate to a hacked Speak & Spell?

Spontaneous design can be as trivial as using duct tape to fix a broken car bumper or as critical as building a temporary survival shelter. Break, Repair, Repeat: Spontaneous & Improvised Design, a pop-up exhibit in Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation^®, is a collaboration among curators who looked deep into The Henry Ford’s collections to find objects that have been broken, repaired or created through improvisation.

Explore objects that have been altered many times, have led multiple lives, and have served various purposes. Each has been deliberately modified for specific practical needs or to share an artistic vision. Unscripted innovation and the messiness of creative problem-solving show us just the “right amount of wrong.”