Liebhold, Peter

Peter Liebhold Soundex Code L143

Peter Liebhold, chairman of the Smithsonian Institution’s Work and Industry Division

Peter Liebhold is the Chair of the Division of Work and Industry at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History.

Throughout his professional life Mr. Liebhold has been involved with industrial history and the effort to preserve the working history of the nation. In 1981 he helped open the Baltimore Museum of Industry in a renovated cannery building on the city’s historic waterfront.

At the Smithsonian since 1988 Mr. Liebhold has curated numerous exhibitions including: Bittersweet Harvest: The Bracero Program 1942-1964, Treasures of American History; America on the Move; Between a Rock and a Hard Place: A History of American Sweatshops, 1820 - Present; Images of Steel, 1860 - 1994; and Who's In Charge: Workers and Managers in the United States.

Projects in development include: a 14,000 sq ft permanent exhibition on American Enterprise; and a small case exhibition on the history of Chinese restaurants in the US. His areas of research and interest include the culture of work, methods and motivations of technological change, immigration/migration, and work imagery.

In addition to his articles in Invention and Technology magazine, Mr. Liebhold has published in Technology and Culture and The Public Historian (where his article "Experiences from the Front Line" won the G. Wesley Johnson Prize).