Well, well, the Ralph Lauren Klassy Kar Kollection is finally coming to the MFA. Don’t get me wrong: I have nothing against treating cars as aesthetic objects, even (especially) under the auspices of a museum exhibit. Museums certainly have a role as presenters of fine arts, but opening up the gates to understanding the aesthetic within commercial and applied arts is a welcome appendage to their primary mission.
No, what’s so maddening about the Lauren car exhibit is that it cedes curatorial responsibility to marketing imperative and amateur collector culture (it helps if that amateur’s rich and famous). It’s not as if the museum - or anyone else - sat down and thought of how they could create an exhibit that would best show off design and form in the automobile. Yet they dress up the exhibit as if that was the case:
More than any other modern artifact, the automobile dramatically changed the way we live. Like any art form, car design reflects changes in fashion, technology, and societal attitudes.
If car as historical artifact is truly what the museum wanted, why stick with luxury and sports collector cars? Are we supposed to take seriously these as the best indicators of changes in societal attitudes? Clearly the MFA sees dollar signs rather than a chance to treat industrial design seriously.
I’ll profess ignorance on how exhibits like these are curated in the first place. MFA staff is credited as curators on these traveling exhibits, but what do the institution curators actually do? Particularly on an exhibit so pre-packaged as this. Perhaps one of my arts-expert readers can elucidate.
No comments have been added to this post yet.