Collecting: Bringing Life to Museums’ Collections

But instead of being relegated to dark corners as curious relics, autos — surely one of the most life-changing inventions of the last 150 years — are being celebrated around the world. In recent years, new museums dedicated to the automobile have opened, others have spent millions on renovations that present vehicles in novel ways, and institutions once limited to displays of fine art have discovered the popular appeal of metal, glass, rubber and chrome.

A prime example is the four-year, $40 million restoration and expansion of the Museo Nazionale dell’Automobile in Turin, Italy, completed in 2011. Founded in 1932 in the northern city that is the capital of Italian automaking and home of Fiat, the museum moved into a midcentury modern building in the city, not far from Fiat’s Lingotto factory, in 1960.

That building, while striking outside, was a traditional exhibition space inside, with a collection of largely Italian cars parked in rows in dimly lit rooms. The rebuilt structure, now covering more than 200,000 square feet, could well be the archetype for the modern automotive museum. It features galleries created by the Swiss stage designer François Confino, intended for both casual and enthusiast audiences.

“We looked to make the museum speak through the settings and the use of a great deal of interactivity,” Rodolfo Gaffino Rossi, director of the museum, said. “We have a duty to create an easy educational path that will bring the visitor closer to history and to give a message to people who were never interested in cars and are not specialists or fans.”

The Museo Nazionale depicts a historical survey of rolling personal transport starting from a full-scale model of the “car” designed by Leonardo da Vinci in 1478 to the latest alternative fuel vehicles. Diorama settings alternate with interactive touch-screen displays, kiosks, an entire home interior made of auto components, film and sound projection, an amusement park-type ride through an auto assembly line and more, all adding up to a lively visitor experience.

Recent news of major changes and developments at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles highlights the challenges and opportunities that institutions face as they prepare to ride a wave of new activity in vehicle exhibition spaces. A shift in leadership and some pruning of the Petersen collection have already begun, while an overhaul of the building’s exterior is in the works as the museum defines its identity as it nears its 20th anniversary.

One of the earliest collections to be established in the United States, now called the Larz Anderson Auto Museum, in Brookline, Mass., opened for public tours in 1927. What visitors in the ’20s saw was much like what people see today: a collection of Victorian and Edwardian automobiles parked beside horse-drawn carriages in their original home, a grand brick 1880s “motor house” on the parklike grounds of an estate.

Changing viewpoints on the display of historically significant cars is readily apparent in the more than 400 cars assembled in Mulhouse, France, by the textile industrialists Hans and Fritz Schlumpf.

The brothers’ collection of rare Bugattis and other exotic cars, once parked on gravel in dusty rows in vast former warehouse rooms, are today displayed on highly polished floors or veneered plinths with bold graphics behind them. The Cité de l’Automobile, National Museum Collection Schlumpf, as it is called, was comprehensively reimagined in 2006, when the operation was taken over by Culturespaces, a private company that manages 10 historic properties in France and Belgium, including art museums in Paris and the Waterloo battlefield in Belgium. A restaurant and a small private racetrack complete the complex.

The trend for the display of vehicles in traditional fine art museums — a relatively recent phenomenon, but an important influence — has to be considered as one of the factors driving this change in approach. That such institutions have opened their galleries to impressive numbers of visitors is not lost on those running auto museums.