The Temporary Contemporary
Automobile and Culture opened at The Temporary Contemporary as part of the LA Summer Olympic Arts Festival in 1984. Featuring approximately thirty cars and two hundred works of art, the exhibition surveyed the history of the car as both an object and a cultural icon, embracing LA’s own deep connection to both.
Automobile and Culture was organized in seven chronological sections, each roughly corresponding to a decade of the 20th century and included artworks by Pablo Picasso, Philip Guston, Robert Rauschenberg, Christo, and others alongside specially commissioned works from Arman, John Baldessari, Tony Beriant, Annette Messager, James Rosenquist, and Edward Ruscha.
On seven selected Saturdays over the course of the exhibition, an outdoor extension of Automobile and Culture, “The Street Show,” was held under the chain link canopy of The Temporary Contemporary. Each day-long installation featured forty to sixty cars of one rare or spectacular model. And over Labor Day weekend, the museum staged “Carplays,” a three-day, ten-event performance art festival commissioned by MOCA and the Mark Taper Forum to accompany the larger exhibition.
Automobile and Culture traveled to the Detroit Institute of Art from June 9 to September 9, 1985.
Automobile and Culture was organized by Walter Hopps, Director of the Menil Foundation and Former Director of the Pasadena Art Museum, with Elizabeth Smith, Curator, and Jacqueline Crist , The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
The Temporary Contemporary was the original name of The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA.