By Robbie Culver
Have you ever wondered what it is like to work with some of our nation’s most precious and unique aviation artifacts? Imagine what it is like to help transport one of NASA’s X-15s, Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Vega, or suspend the Spirit of St. Louis for display! The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum (NASM), home to much of America’s aviation history, is one of the only places a person can experience this.
Kristen Horning, EAA 1531122, is a museum specialist at the Smithsonian. Kristen works in the collections department’s collections processing unit (CPU), where she is a member of a team that manages, transports, and preserves objects that are already on exhibit or are currently in storage at NASM’s three locations. According the Smithsonian’s website, “The core responsibility of the Collections Department is to properly protect and provide accountability for the artifacts in the National Collections held by the National Air and Space Museum.”
If you have ever been to the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles airport in Virginia, or the NASM on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., then you have seen the amazing variety of history preserved for generations of Americans to learn from. It is the efforts of teams such as the CPU that keep these unique treasures accessible. The Paul E. Garber facility in Suitland, Maryland, is also used for the storage of artifacts, although work has been underway since 2011 to relocate many artifacts to new, more climate-controlled facilities in Chantilly, Maryland, an effort that continues today.
Kristen has worked on projects involving disassembly and transport of the B-17G Shoo Shoo Shoo Baby from the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton, Ohio, back to the Udvar-Hazy museum. She was also involved in the transportation of large aircraft between museum locations — including the Douglas DC-3, the Ford Tri-Motor, the North American X-15, and Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed 5B Vega — as well as part of the team suspending Charles Lindbergh’s Ryan NYP, Spirit of St. Louis, in the museum on the National Mall.
She assisted in overseeing the retrieval and return of the Freedom 7 Mercury capsule that was on loan to the John F. Kennedy library, as well as delivering Jackie Cochran’s T-38 Talon to the Smithsonian’s restoration shop. Any one of these projects involves professional, well-planned work with very specialized processes.
Currently, the team is prepping for the next part of the National Mall building renovation, where NASM is halfway done with renovations. To get the rest of the museum ready, teams will work on prepping, transporting, and installing artifacts in new galleries that have not yet opened to the public.
Kristen has been working at the Smithsonian for seven years, after earning her undergraduate degree in history at the University of California, Riverside. She said she “scrambled to figure out what career I wanted to pursue. There was a small museum near my campus named the March Air Field Museum, and since I had always loved museums, I thought I should volunteer there and see what museum work was like. I immediately fell in love.”
Kristen added, “I started to learn about artifact collections work and found a passion for airplanes and women in aviation history along the way. After my volunteer work there, as well as at the San Diego Air & Space Museum, I decided to make a career of it. Around that same time, I had also decided that I wanted to work at NASM.”
Following a relocation to Washington, D.C., Kristen obtained her master’s degree in public history at American University while taking on various internships at NASM. It was during this time when she obtained an internship during graduate school in the collections processing unit, which several years later led to her current permanent job.
When asked what excites her about her current role, Kristen said, “There are so many things that excite me about my job. I feel very lucky to be a part of a team that manages and protects artifacts that are meaningful to the public and hopefully to future generations as well.”
She added, “I also love the scope of our collection at Air and Space and the ability to learn something new about our nation’s history through the lens of the artifacts that I take care of. We manage a collection that includes clothing, art, memorabilia, aircraft, spacecraft, and many more types of artifacts. And finally, I love the challenges involved in moving large, one-of-a-kind, and historically significant aircraft; each move is never identical, so it keeps you on your toes.”
As a first-time attendee at AirVenture 2023, Kristen said, “Oshkosh was a lot of fun! I have never attended before but always dreamed of going. I was especially excited to attend as a representative of our museum to talk about some of the work that we do.
“I was overwhelmed by all the events and workshops and wished I had more time to attend them all! I guess that just means I will have to go back! The night air show was spectacular.”
A particularly exciting moment for Kristen was “meeting Patty Wagstaff in person and then watching her fly in the air show at Oshkosh. We have her Extra 260 on display in our museum, and before the air show all I could do was imagine what it looked like flying in her hands. I thought that her aerobatic flying at the show was so fluid, elegant, and of course, entertaining to watch. It was a certainly a highlight for me.”
As for her own aviation aspirations, Kristen “would love to become a pilot one day. My fiancé (who also works at the National Air and Space Museum) and I have dreams of building our own aircraft and flying it.”
“During graduate school, I studied women in early aviation and was inspired to try out this flying thing. I figured that if I were to research and write about their stories, I should try to understand the experience and appeal of flying myself. I took a discovery flight in a Piper Arrow IV shortly before I graduated and absolutely loved it. That interest in flying only grew once I starting working at the National Air and Space Museum.”
When asked about what she would tell youths looking to become involved in aviation, Kristen said, “If aviation is something you love, do not hesitate to pursue it. There are so many ways you can make a career in aviation, whether that be as a pilot, engineer, or even as a museum professional who moves historic aircraft around. Now, more than ever before, aviation is becoming more accessible to a wider variety of people.
“Also, a reminder that a plane does not know or care what gender you are when you climb into the pilot’s seat.”
The NASM will attend AirVenture 2024 and will have representatives from various departments of the museum, with the collections department (the people who work on restoring, conserving, and protecting the artifacts) in attendance.
Be sure to stop by Booth 327 in the Main Aircraft Display to see what your NASM has to share, and meet with and hear from the dedicated staff who work hard behind the scenes to preserve history for all of us.