On the Road
The Toledo Museum of Art celebrates American car culture with a new exhibition now open in Ohio
June 15-September 15
Toledo Museum of Art 2445 Monroe Street Toledo, OH 43620 t: (419) 255-8000 www.toledomuseum.org
If Tom Cochrane’s 1991 road-rock hit “Life is a Highway” somehow worms its way into your ear in the next couple minutes, thank the Toledo Museum of Art, which borrows the title of the song for its newest exhibition. Life is away:art and American Car Culture opens June 15 and examines artists and artworks inspired by America’s rich and lasting fascination with the automobile.
The exhibition draws from the Ohio museum’s permanent collection along with important loans from many North American institutions. On view will be more than 150 works of art in a variety of media including painting, sculpture, photography, film, prints and drawings. Life is a Highway is curated by Robin Reisenfeld, the museum’s curator of works on paper.
“The show will really examine early car culture, its emergence in the Midwest, and how artists formed a unique relationship with car culture as it gave rise to the auto industry,” she says, adding that the Toledo Museum of Art’s location serves as an important reminder of the area’s fascination with the car.“car culture really became associated with a set of values that exists in the Midwest.the auto industry helped shape and reshape the identity of the region, in terms of labor, of community value, and so
many other ways.”
Artists featured in the exhibition include Thomas Hart Benton, John Sloan, Andy Warhol, Reginald Marsh, Stuart Davis and Charles Sheeler, the precisionist painter who will have several paintings and photographs in the show. Sheeler’s 1931 oil Classic Landscape will be on view.the image shows part of the famous River Rouge plant owned by Ford Motor Company in Dearborn, Michigan.the plant is still owned by Ford, which makes the F-150 truck there today, but when Sheeler painted the fully integrated plant it had only been open for three years. (A year
later, in 1932, Diego Rivera was invited to River Rouge to study the facility and paint it.) River Rouge comes up again in Sheelers’ photograph Crisscrossed Conveyors, River Rouge Plant, which was taken in 1927 (printed in 1929) and shows a cement factory.the image would later appear on the cover of Ford News in 1928.
“Sheeler’s painting of River
Rouge shows the early emergence of the automotive industry, and that’s what this exhibition is intended to do, to show automobiles as a symbol of change and transition,” says Reisenfeld.“sometimes it was a symbol to celebrate technological progress, or a strong connection to Midwestern values or the rise of the auto industry.with Sheeler, he took these low points of view, and it gave his subjects a monumentality or religiosity, which is interesting because he was making a comparison between technology and religion.”
Other works in the exhibition include Marsh’s 1931 Coupe, a watercolor over graphite, and Davis’ 1930s oil on canvas, Landscape with Garage Lights, a very modern work with strong forms and vibrant colors. Photography will play an important role with works by Andreas Feininger, Walker Evans, Berenice Abbott, Margaret Bourke-white and several works from the great Dorothea Lange. “Located in one of the nation’s and the Midwest’s leading manufacturing centers, the Toledo Museum of Art is uniquely positioned to organize this groundbreaking look at the impact and iconography of the automobile in American visual culture,” says Brian Kennedy, the museum’s director.“tma also serves as the arts centerpiece of Toledo’s thriving cultural community, and Life is a Highway continues the museum’s sustained commitment to engaging our visitors in new and creative ways through our exhibitions and educational offerings.”