AkzoNobel celebrated Independence Day by unveiling a mural at the new Pontiac, Michigan Transportation Museum. The museum is expected to open later this year and will honor the industrialization of this community and the many people whose work inspired these efforts. Through the museum’s existing and growing collections, they will help educate and inspire young people to chart their own destiny in an increasingly digital world. The museum will be in a 55,000 square foot facility featuring vehicle and artifact display galleries, a theater, research library, classrooms and restoration spaces.

AkzoNobel’s automotive legacy in Pontiac dates back to 1907 and still plays an important role in the automobile refinish market today. AkzoNobel’s heritage includes manufacturing products in the heart of the emerging buggy and transportation industry when the Pontiac Varnish Company first started making varnish in Pontiac. The site manager at the Pontiac Automotive and Specialty Coatings factory Ricardo Rosso stated: “Paint for the transportation industry has been made continuously on this site for 116 years, and today the proud tradition is carried out by AkzoNobel Coatings Inc. who acquired the site in 1985 from Wyandotte Paint Products and replaced it with a modern factory. Today we manufacture premium coatings for commercial vehicles, vehicle refinishing and collision repair, signage and emergency vehicles for our North American customers.”

Painting the mural at the Pontiac Transportation Museum was part of AkzoNobel’s Let’s Color Program in Pontiac. The Let’s Color program in North America aims to inspire communities to collaborate with AkzoNobel to transform public spaces into vibrant, colorful places where people can connect, create and thrive. The program works with local organizations, communities and volunteers to revitalize public spaces with paint. AkzoNobel employees from our Troy and Pontiac sites applied AkzoNobel’s own International® primer to create a blank canvas on which mural artists with Diaz Sign Art, brought color to the rich history of the Pontiac transportation industry and AkzoNobel. The company’s goal this year is to complete important community projects at each of our factories across North America. AkzoNobel is proud to give back to its communities and to be a part of the fabric at the new Pontiac Transportation Museum. The Director, Terry Connolly stated, “The City of Pontiac has a tremendous legacy in wheeled vehicles. The Pontiac Transportation Museum intends to illustrate this proud history and use it for inspiration of STEM education and for economic development in Pontiac. We also have a robust automotive supply industry in Pontiac. We’ve been pleased by the support of AkzoNobel, and their paint and coatings plant in Pontiac and R&D Center in Troy.”