“In 1974 Andy Warhol bought himself a two-tone Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow — brown roof, black doors — custom-ordered from London. It didn’t matter that Warhol had no driver’s license. For some a car is more than a vehicle, and in “Automania,” the Museum of Modern Art’s engine-revving summer show, the automobile appears as an art object all its own” (Farago, 2021).
In today’s car market, where every manufacturer produces almost identical-looking cars, it’s easy to forget the sleek and beautiful form that the automobile has the potential to take. The Automania exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York sought to highlight this beauty through a series of vehicles among its galleries and throughout its prominent courtyard. “Three automobiles, … have ascended to the museum’s third-floor galleries: a pistachio Volkswagen Beetle from 1959, a nearly seamless Cisitalia 202 GT in rosso corsa red, and a midnight-blue Jaguar E-Type Roadster from 1963. They appear along with a cross-section of art and automotive ephemera from the collection: road signs, fabric swatches, ad campaigns, and photography of both the open road and the traffic-choked city” (Farago, 2021).
MoMA’s collection spanned the decades, showing a SmartCar next to a 1950’s Fiat 500f. However, this wasn’t the most jarring juxtaposition encompassed in this exhibition. This juxtaposition couldn’t be found on the gallery floors but instead in the fine print on the gallery walls that list the sponsors of the show. “In a wall panel the curators mention the Beetle’s ‘inglorious origins,’ though there is more recent VW unpleasantness this show and catalog do not discuss. Over the last decade, MoMA has enjoyed more than a million dollars in support each year from Volkswagen — a company that admitted to equipping 11 million cars with illegal software to cheat emissions testing, and then lying to investigators about the scheme. … While one VW division was violating the Clean Air Act, another was putting its name on MoMA programming that would boost its civic credentials — notably ‘Expo 1: New York,’ at MoMA PS1, a Volkswagen-funded ecological showcase from 2013 that in retrospect looks like an egregious act of greenwashing.” (Farago, 2021).
While the beauty of these vehicles as designed objects is an important part in the history of industrial and automotive design, their novelty quickly wears off in the background of these questionable museum sponsorships. It’s important when consuming any art to understand not only what is in front of you in a gallery but why it’s there in the first place. This article serves as a stark reminder that companies with a bottom line will do anything to preserve their image. As electric vehicles become more and more prevalent, it’ll be interesting to see how manufacturers adopt their marketing and influence tactics to drive sales and hide potential scandals that have yet to reveal themselves.
References
Farago, J. (2021). At MoMA, Love of Cars Can Be Exhausting. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/12/arts/design/automania-moma-review.html
Tullo, V. (2021). A 1965 Porsche 911 Coupe designed by F.A. “Butzi” Porsche entered the collection in 2017 [Photograph]. The New York Times. https://static01.nyt.com/images/2021/08/13/arts/12automania-review-8/merlin_192381813_8c29f070-06dd-4181-ad1f-0a120c77ea63-superJumbo.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp
Tullo, V. (2021). The Fiat 500f City Car, designed between 1957 and 1965 by Dante Giacosa. This example is from 1968 [Photograph]. The New York Times. https://static01.nyt.com/images/2021/08/12/arts/12automania-review-9/merlin_192381729_f9756154-f0eb-4b4d-b109-9954cbc5b6f5-superJumbo.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp
Tullo, V. (2021). Visitors pass the Jaquar E-Type Roadster, an icon of the Swinging Sixties, at “Automania” [Photograph]. The New York Times. https://static01.nyt.com/images/2021/08/12/arts/12automania-review-10/merlin_192381474_d54b38d7-a46e-4537-9603-e27d195db54c-superJumbo.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp
