Art Deco Collection Finds a Parking Spot
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| Mullin Automotive Museum, Oxnard (closed since 2024) |
About 30 deluxe French Art Deco cars from Peter Mullin's collection have been donated to the Petersen Automotive Museum. Mullin, an insurance magnate and longtime Petersen board member, established his own car museum in Oxnard (now closed) and engaged Norman Foster to design a private museum for his collection in West Oxfordshire (never happened). Mullin died in 2023. The following year four prime cars were donated to the Petersen while the rest of the collection was dispersed at auction. It was assumed that was the end of the story.
It's now been announced that the Mullin Family Foundation has given two dozen additional cars to the Petersen. The gift spans the marques Hispano-Suiza, Bugatti, Voisin, Delahaye, Peugeot, and Talbot Lago, and covers the period from 1922 to 1951.
Starting today (July 18), a new Mullin Family Gallery within the museum's Vault will house a selection of the gift. (A guided tour of the Vault is available only with a separate admission.) Planned for 2028 is an exhibition of 30 vehicles from the Mullin donation.
A few blocks down Wilshire, LACMA's Geffen Galleries is showing a Raymond Loewy-designed Studebaker Avanti. When art museums show cars, they generally present them as industrial design—an attempt to package modernity for the masses. The Mullin collection represents an older tradition of handcrafted beauty for the very, very wealthy. Within that remit, the Mullin cars have few rivals.
Comments
Wow..that's 58 cars to the Petersen!
I know nothing of cars. I wonder how the cars sent to auction compare and contrast in quality and rarity with those that were gifted.
Article started with "about 30" not "30"
> is showing a Raymond
> Loewy-designed Studebaker
> Avanti.
The Minneapolis Institute of Art has an auto from the 1930's on display:
https://collections.artsmia.org/art/98653/tatra-t87-four-door-sedan-hans-ledwinka
Observing the installation format and quality of other institutions (art or otherwise) has been quite an eye opener. Museum exhibits in City A, City B or City C nowadays show a level of professionalism or sophistication far above what might have been more common decades ago.
Natural-history- or science-type (and not just art) installations show an attention to detail that's quite impressive. Or where nothing can be second guessed.
Then there's LACMA and its Geffen Galleries.
Oh, well. Look at all the smaller cities of America that created elaborate Beaux-Arts-style museums decades before Richard Brown and William Pereira were given the task of building something at 5905 Wilshire Blvd.
Hey, Michael Govan, curators and staffers, some day history may finally stop repeating itself!