The National WWII Museum's Expressions of America

Since 2009, Solomon Group has worked closely with the The National WWII Museum to tell the story of the war that changed the world in new and increasingly immersive ways. Together, we have fabricated 13 new exhibits and installed custom technology throughout their multi-block museum campus, including the new Higgins Hotel by Hilton.

In 2021, we completed the illumination of the massive 148ft high and 133ft wide Canopy of Peace, a sprawling, architectural addition to the New Orleans skyline, and a precursor to an exciting sound + light experience that would soon be unveiled below it. Our latest project, a work several years in the making, Expressions of America, is a first-of-its-kind nighttime sound and light experience celebrating the power of individual Americans to impact the world around them during a time of monumental conflict.

The Museum had been working on the development of Expressions of America with Mousetrappe and Solomon Group since 2016. The concept for the experience is inspired by the world-renowned ‘son et lumiere’ concept of large-scale, outdoor sound and light displays that have become popular across the globe. The script for the show was drawn from the Museum’s extensive collection of wartime letters, oral histories, and archival footage. All of the words in the show come directly from the men and women of the WWII generation: soldiers, nurses, chaplains, factory workers, artists, entertainers, and supportive loved ones on the Home Front.

We utilized the newest and most durable Panasonic outdoor projection technology to display the wartime letters and oral histories from the Museum’s collection. With the extreme humidity of New Orleans in mind, our Technology team worked very closely with manufacturers to solve for the unique problem of dense fog forming inside the projectors and ensure a crystal clear view of the content, no matter the weather. This immersive show has surrounding projections up to 90 feet tall and runs weekly, allowing audiences from across the world to experience the stories of the WWII generation like never before.