2022 STars hall of fame

William S. Pretzer

Senior Curator, National Museum of African American History and Culture, Smithsonian Institution

Mariemont Elementary School | Arden MS | Rio Americano HS

Dr. William Pretzer is Senior Curator of History at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, a position he has held since 2009. He oversees the work of six curators and three museum specialists and co-curated “A Changing America: 1968 and Beyond,” one of the museum’s twelve inaugural exhibitions created for the museum’s opening on the National Mall in 2016.

From 2006 to 2009, Bill was Director of the Museum of Cultural & Natural History as well as Director of the Museum Studies Program and Associate Professor of History at Central Michigan University. Before that, he spent 21 years as a curator and educator at The Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. While at the Ford, Bill was instrumental in the acquisition and display of the Rosa Parks bus and the development of the Henry Ford Academy, a four-year public charter high school on the museum grounds in collaboration with the Ford Motor Company and the Wayne County Regional Educational Services Agency.

Bill was a member of the Allen Park (MI) Board of Education from 2002 to 2006, serving as president for three of those years. He also served on the boards of the Michigan Museum Association, the Michigan Council for History Education, and the Southeast Michigan Coalition for Cultural Education. He has been a member of the boards of the International Technology Education Association, the International Science and Engineering Fair-2000, and the National Commission for Technology Education (a national educational standards project funded by the National Air and Space Administration and the National Science Foundation). Bill has been a frequent grant reviewer for the federal  Institute of Museum and Library Services and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Bill has published scholarly articles and book chapters on topics ranging from Thomas Edison’s invention process and contemporary technology education to the labor history of the printing trade and African American social and political history to the practice of public history in museums.

Bill received his B.A. from Stanford University and his Ph.D. from Northern Illinois University.