Barn Again! Celebrating an American Icon is a Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibit that 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 what it could be. It looks at the origin and fate of the barn in its roles as warehouse, factory and legend.
Like the town hall and the skyscraper, the barn 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! helps examine what values barns represent, what various types of barns and building techniques say about farming and American society, how changes in agricultural practices led to changes in barn design, and what barns tell us about our past and our future.