DEEGAN ON LA--The newly transformed Petersen Automotive Museum is much more than meets the eye. No matter which side of the “love it or hate it” design conversation you’re on, once inside, you forget all about the exterior. There is so much to capture your attention and imagination, to entertain and educate you in twenty-five new galleries that interactively display automotive history, industry, and artistry. Once inside, it hardly matters what’s going on outside.
Considering that the museum’s namesake, magazine publisher Robert E. Petersen, created Hot Rod Magazine in 1950, the building’s facade with its stylized “hot rod” attitude is not inappropriate. It’s a “fireball of speed and steel” said 4th District Councilman David Ryu, at the ribbon cutting.
Once you see what’s coming across the street at the Academy’s Movie Museum (photo below) and LACMA’s proposed horizontal monolith, you’ll find the Petersen will blend nicely into a block’s worth of emblematic, iconic architectural statements. It represents a shift from the ubiquitous century-old Spanish Mediterranean buildings, so familiar to generations of residents, to the more contemporary architecture of Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (Petersen,) Pritzker Award winners Renzo Piano (Academy’s Movie Museum and LACMA,) and Peter Zumthor (LACMA).
In the future, pilots on the glide path into LAX may point out to their passengers our newly imagined Museum Row, much as they do when crossing over the Grand Canyon.
“It’s what’s inside that counts” is an apt truism that once again proves satisfying, as you explore the galleries’ unusual and captivating discoveries such as the “silver room”, a surprising motorcycle display featuring many of history’s great motorcycles for both road and racetrack, the Art Center study center, an interactive technology exhibition, a driving simulator gallery, the basement Vault, and a library with digital automotive archives.
Every one of these exhibits engages the public in new, exciting ways, using dozens of touch screen displays, many of them interactive.
Everything connected to the automobile is covered, from the artistry and design of the very early automobiles (that are as much “rolling sculptures” and announcements of style as they are means of transportation,) to alternative power and propulsion, to vehicle manufacturing.
Automobile technology is presented in ways that are easily accessible for adults as well as kids, making it easy to grasp how an automobile operates through interactive displays and models.
How cars are designed is demonstrated in a unique partnership with Art Center that now has a 2,000 square-foot satellite for the Art Center College of Design Studio. Many of the world’s foremost automotive designers studied at Art Center. Students at the Petersen classroom can answer questions about the principals and practicalities of car design.
How cars are made, using a 2016 Maserati Quattroporte S Q4 as the example, shows the five key car-assembly steps, from the proverbial drawing board to when the vehicle rolls off the assembly line. It shows these major auto-making stages: raw materials, bare body shell, drivetrain, trims and finishes, and the final product. The exhibit utilizes several cutaways to illustrate the technical details behind the construction process. For demonstration purposes, the Petersen has partnered with Maserati to teach museum attendees how a car is created. It could not be more authentic.
What makes cars go—-their propulsion—-is increasingly important in an era of alternative energy sources. The electric car is one example. Other alternative fuels sources have, surprising to many, been tested and used before.
Included in the “Alternative Power" gallery exhibit are four types of alternative propulsion for passenger vehicles, that include compressed natural gas (CNG), gas-electric hybrid, hydrogen fuel cell electric and electric battery. Each power source represents an exciting and innovative way to help reduce dependence on fossil fuels. Knowing more about this, for today’s drivers, is not only important but practical.
How cars are driven, on the race track, is down the hall in what may become a magnet for gamers: a participatory driving gallery with ten sit-down Microsoft Xbox Forza racing simulators. Museum guests can guide a prototype 2017 Ford GT, and several other vehicles, around highly realistic tracks from all over the world, including Daytona, Le Mans and the Top Gear test track. Pick your race track, and start your engines! See how you rank on the leaderboards! No age requirement: if your feet can reach the pedals you can race.
Education takes on a new dimension with one of the most groundbreaking and significant learning opportunities at the new museum that will be connecting audiences with automotive history.
Scholarship and fast cars do not seem to go together, but historians, car buffs and neophytes that want to know more about automotive history will soon be able to access historical Petersen Publishing materials in the new Robert E. Petersen Library & Research Center at the Petersen Automotive Museum. This is a huge advantage for car-crazed Southern Californians.
Through an important media partnership with TEN, The Enthusiast Network, will house its photo archive in the library. “We’re thrilled to bring the original archives back home to the Petersen Automotive Museum,” says the museum’s Executive Director Terry Karges. “This is a great opportunity to preserve the recorded history of car culture in Southern California. We’re honored to be the caretakers of that history and are excited to share it with future generations.”
The TEN photo archive will be the largest automotive enthusiast archive in the world and will include eight million images from 1955-1997, thousands of which have never before been seen. At the heart of the photo archive is imagery from Petersen Publishing, which is responsible for the creation of both Hot Rod (1948) and Motor Trend (1949) magazines. Margie and Robert E. Petersen’s legacies include these magazines and countless others, in addition to the Petersen Automotive Museum that the couple founded in 1994.
“For decades you had to be on the Hot Rod staff to access the Petersen Publishing Archives, and now through our partnership with the Petersen Automotive Museum, we can share these historic images,” says David Kennedy, Editor-In-Chief of Hot Rod. “Within this collection the birth of automotive icons like Corvette, Mustang, the small-block Chevy, and the 426 Hemi can be chronicled. There are also decades of motorsports photos from Daytona, Pomona, Riverside and Indy — it’s truly unlike any other photo collection on earth.”
“After Robert E. Petersen sold his Petersen Publishing Company in 1996, it was always his goal to have the historical magazine archives and memorabilia including all the photo images from 1948, some of which he personally photographed in those early years, housed at the Petersen Automotive Museum,” says GiGi Carleton of the Petersen Foundation. “This dream has been fulfilled by relocating the TEN archives to the new Robert E. Petersen Library and Research Center at the Petersen Automotive Museum, where all the archives will be digitalized and available to automotive writers and researchers.”
Corresponding nicely with the library and historic archives are the displays on the third floor dedicated to “history.” Here you can see everything from a Ford Model T to concept cars and, in the Hollywood gallery, cars of Television and Movies.
The dazzling quantity of image projection devices to help inform and educate visitors is one of the astonishing elements of how the museum transforms into such an easily accessible display space. The former version of the museum had 10 flat screens. Today, there are 47 Panasonic projectors, 35 interactive touchscreens, 25 LED monitors, 100 CARSpad tablets, an 8’ x 20’ LED billboard, and three “projection walls” running from 130 to 160 feet each.
Not enough? Visit the basement “vault” where up to 150 vehicles are stored and about three dozen will be on display for viewing.
When you’re ready for a break, the renowned Drago Brothers will feed you, sharing their well-recognized and lauded culinary legacy.
“Engagement” may become the word that visitors use most frequently when describing their visit to the newly reimagined Petersen Automotive Museum, and that could be the critical factor in creating a repeat visit model that eluded the Petersen in its first iteration as a museum. Stats for the earlier version of the museum show that 60% of visitors were one-time visitors. Turning that around and making the Petersen a go-to place, with repeat visits, is high on the list of management’s goals, and they have a great chance of turning that corner once people visit and experience the very diverse installations and displays.
A four-hour visit on Media Day was hardly enough time to absorb all that is offered. Reporting on the inside of the museum will be “mission-critical” – much more so than talking about what’s on the outside. A few days ago, the Grand Opening of the new Petersen Automotive Museum marked the beginning of the race for public acceptance!
(Tim Deegan is a long-time resident and community leader in the Miracle Mile, who has served as board chair at the Mid City West Community Council and on the board of the Miracle Mile Civic Coalition. Tim can be reached at [email protected].) Edited for City Watch by Linda Abrams.
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 13 Issue 101
Pub: Dec 15, 2015
Museum Row Wow!: The Petersen Automotive is Much More Than Meets the Eye
