Tag Archives: Petersen

Dream Machines

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Petersen Automotive Museum
March 7, 2020
Wilshire Blvd
Los Angeles

We went to the Petersen auto museum to see the special exhibition Hollywood Dream Machines: Vehicles of Science Fiction and Fantasy.  Dozens of vehicles from science fiction themed movies and television shows are on display.  The exhibition was curated in collaboration with the San Diego-based Comic-Con Museum.  It runs through May 2020.

There are science fiction vehicles displayed around the lobby and even a couple in the parking garage.  The first car to meet us as we entered the main gallery on the ground floor was the familiar DeLorean from the Back to the Future movies.  We particularly enjoyed the numerous Batman related vehicles, not only the Batmobiles, but also Batman motorcycles, Joker cars, and models and images of the Batmobile over the years.

Meredith and her sister were taken by the Star Wars speeder on display. We rolled our eyes at the exhibit tag, though.  For all three of us the 1977 movie will always be Star Wars, and not The New Hope.

We also enjoyed seeing other non-Hollywood classic cars.  The Petersen has an extensive collection, which it rotates from time to time. Although we have been there before, there were many vehicles on display that we had not seen before, including the 1886 Benz Motorwagen pictured above.  The Motorwagen had 0.75 horsepower and could achieve a top speed of 10 miles per hour.  Although not the very first automobile, it may be the first practical one.

On our three prior visits, we went with Meredith‘s mother Margaret. Our most recent prior visit was to see the grand reopening in 2015.  Shortly before that the museum had remodeled its exterior; our blog post about that visit, including the architecture, can be seen here.  The year before that we went to the Petersen to see the Mustang exhibit, celebrating the 50th anniversary of Ford’s release of the first Mustangs.

The museum’s collection is extensive, and not all cars it owns can be displayed at any one time.  The Petersen, for an extra charge, offers tours of its vault.  We have never seen the vault but think it might be worth doing someday.

We noticed the same deficits in accessibility that struck us when we last visited, with Margaret in her wheelchair.  Although there are no steps to climb inside the museum, the internal doors are heavy and do not have push button openers, and the parking garage lacks an elevator.

Parking is expensive, a flat $17 for the day, but that reflects the Wilshire location.  Other parking options in the area are in the same cost range.

We are thinking that our next Los Angeles museum venture will probably be to the Skirball in May, to see the Star Trek exhibition, which will open on April 30.

Petersen’s Grand Reopening

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Petersen Automotive Museum
Wilshire Boulevard “Miracle Mile”
December 12, 2015

The Petersen Automotive Museum has just reopened after a long (14 month) remodeling project. We love old cars and so does Margaret, so we headed for the Miracle Mile to check out the new Petersen. We had been there with her at least twice before, most recently on Mustang Weekend.

The exterior has been totally redone and is the subject of some controversy in architectural circles: some love it, some, including Los Angeles Times’ architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne, hate it, calling it happily tasteless and aggressively bad. Another critic called it an atrocity. The wall is red, and it is encircled by silver metallic undulating bands of metal, giving the feel of motion. On the whole, we liked it. We have to agree with Petersen board president Bruce Meyer, who told the Los Angeles Times “Before, nobody knew we were here. Now, nobody’s ever going to drive by this building and not know we’re here.”

You can get a little sense of the exterior, both before and after, from the photos below, the top one taken on this visit and the lower one taken in 2012:

Petersen_exterior_new

Petersen_2012

The interior of the museum repeats the red color on some accent walls, with complementary white, gray, and silver walls and carpeting.

The staff at the ticket desk suggested we start on the third floor and work our way down. The third floor kept us captivated for quite a while. It is a large open gallery with cars from all eras. The display starts with a beautiful replica of the first automobile ever built, in 1886 by Benz. Meredith was interested to see the rare Davis Divan on display. Its restoration had been the subject of a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo. She is on the museum’s email list and had received periodic updates about the car, so it was nice to see it “in the flesh.” There is also a gorgeous 1956 Chevrolet Bel Air on display, which brought back memories for Margaret and Meredith of their family car in the 1960’s, a white 1955 Bel Air. Most cars cannot be touched, but we took turns sitting in an antique Ford.

Petersen_Ford_Bob

Meredith asked Margaret, what was the first car she ever drove? She said it was her mother’s 1949 Ford, and smiled at the memory.

One entire wall of the third floor gallery displays cars from movies and television shows, with film clips running in the back showing the cars on the screen. They were a varied group, including (among many other vehicles) the Jaguar and Aston Martin from the latest James Bond movie; the Batmobile from Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992); the Pontiac Aztec from Breaking Bad; and the Volkswagen bus from Little Miss Sunshine.

We had lingered so long on the third floor, that we decided to save the second floor for another day. It includes exhibits about the automotive industry, manufacturing, high-performance road cars, hot rods and custom cars, alternative power vehicles, and motorcycles. It also includes the Discovery Center with driving simulators.

We finished our visit with a stroll through the first floor galleries. The theme of this floor is artistry, and a large collection of the most beautiful classic luxury cars is displayed here, all perfectly restored. They are truly gorgeous.

Admission to the museum is $15 for adults, $12 for students or seniors, and $7 for youth. Bob was given free admission as an educator with his school ID card. Parking is $12 for all day.

Wheelchair accessibility is adequate to meet ADA requirements but is not outstanding. Visitors with a handicapped placard can park in designated spots on the ground floor of the garage, if any are available. (All were full the day we visited, but we had parked in the Page Museum lot to be closer to Johnnie’s for lunch, so were not inconvenienced.) If you have to park on the upper floor of the garage, be aware there is still no elevator! That omission was a missed opportunity in the renovation. Within the museum there are elevators, of course, but galleries and bathrooms have heavy doors without handicapped push button openings. That is not an issue for us, with two able-bodied people helping Margaret, but could be more of a problem for another visitor.

Petersen_Johnnys

The museum restaurant is not yet open; it is scheduled to open in April 2016. We had lunch before the museum visit at our favorite place on Wilshire, Johnnie’s New York Pizzeria. Our youngest daughter joined us for lunch, and we all enjoyed both the visit and the food.

Petersen Automotive Museum

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Petersen Automotive Museum
Los Angeles, Wilshire Boulevard
May 3, 2014

We went to the Petersen on “Mustang Weekend,” a celebration of the 50th anniversary of Ford’s introducing the Mustang. Meredith is a big Mustang fan, and Margaret loves old cars, so this outing was a natural.

The Mustang exhibit (May 3, 2014 – October 18, 2014) featured Mustangs of all five “generations,” with a bonus viewing of the brand new 2015 model. We timed our visit to take a guided tour through the Mustang exhibit, then walked back through it on our own. The cars on display spanned all 50 years. It was amusing to find out that the Petersen had trouble finding a Mustang II to display, from the second generation, because it is not popular with collectors. The museum finally bought one through Craigslist just a few weeks before the exhibit opened. We particularly liked seeing the light blue convertible Mustang Ronald Reagan used to tour California on the campaign trail, when he ran for governor of California in 1966. Period TV ads for Mustangs were running on a loop in a back corner of the exhibit.

petersen-mustang

We went on to another special exhibit, this one of town cars (February 15, 2014- February 8, 2015). We had not known that is a technical term. According to the museum website, “from the early 1900s to the mid-1960s, the term ‘town car’ referred to a body style distinguished by an open chauffeur’s compartment and an enclosed passenger area.” There were many beautiful old cars on display, some with handcrafted, one-of-a-kind coaches.

We finished our visit with a tour through the Streetscape area, a permanent exhibition of various cars and contemporaneous artifacts in the setting of Southern California throughout the span of the 20th century.

We were unhappy with one thing, namely that there are no elevators in the parking structure next to the museum. There are handicapped spots on the ground floor of that garage, of course, but we do not have a disabled placard. We make do with regular parking on our outings even though Margaret is in a wheelchair. A parking attendant directed us to the upper floor when we drove in, and it was only after we were up there that we found there were no elevators to get down, just stairs. Since there had not been any regular parking available on the ground floor, we left the car up there and walked down the (steep) ramp to get to the museum. When Meredith spoke to the attendant who had sent us upstairs, he shrugged off her complaint. We did get an apology from the ticket seller inside, though, and the security guards inside the museum were friendly and helpful.

We had eaten lunch at Johnnie’s New York Pizzeria (several blocks east, at 5757 Wilshire) before we went to the museum. It is not the closest place to eat – for convenience there is a Johnny Rockets hamburger restaurant inside the Petersen – but Johnnie’s Pizzeria is our favorite whenever we visit any of the museums in the Wilshire / Hancock Park area. We always enjoy the food and service there. The first time we visited we did not realize it was a chain restaurant; it was only when we looked it up online afterwards that we found out that fact.