So far, the hits haven’t been stacking up, but the charm of Italy’s Car Museums is so charming that the Doha National Museum’s first step into the genre is sure to be a hit. The opening of Qatar’s first museum devoted to cars is a doddle by any measure—only 15 cars were put on display here—but like a diamond in the rough, its parent museums offer plenty of jewels for the picking.
The Grand Trousseau is arguably the best known of the international Car Museums, and its collection—one of the largest in the world—won’t soon be left for the next car museum to come along. Car museums are the problem, not the solution. We’re not talking about the Anish Kapoor art show inside the Museum of Modern Art or the short redone parking garage under the National Archives, but their slow and steady rise to ubiquity as a clever way to fill huge museums with obscure museum bric-a-brac. The Grand Trousseau has opened five other museums—two in Milan and two in Paris—in the past few years, with more planned for the future.
“There’s nothing wrong with art museums,” says Angelo Pafendi, the curator of the Grand Trousseau and the Arabia Heritage Museum, which also opened this month, “but you have to have something else.” To that end, Pafendi was responsible for locating a giant Tim Burton-like Tiki Room for his Museum of the Cartoon Batmobile, built in a courtyard and set atop a stage for indoor group shows.
Most Car Museums are just another night at the museum—or fancy cocktail in the big space. But the Veneto’s Rizzoli-Rizzoli Museum in Pisa boasts a rotating group of rotating exhibits, with new ones—available free of charge—incoming weekly. (Shows change every 15 days.) And then there’s the impeccably decorated Turin Center for Car Art and the 17th century Palazzo Ritrovato, inside a fortress (1926, anyone?) that boasts an auto warehouse divided into cozy rooms that look straight out of the front of an Italian Motorcycles or Fiat shop.
For a newbie, in almost every case the best thing you can do is visit a handful of Car Museums, taking your pick of the current locations, then explore—some online, some in person. Maybe you’ll find a painting or a Salvador Dali sculpture at a museum outside your city—the Museo d’Automobile, Florence, is one of the best museums of its kind.
Get there: Turin Center for Car Art is located at 1 Banca Nervi di Siena. The Gendarmerie dell’Autonoma Ciutat Perona is on Via Munsteraria in Parma. There are special openings in Venice, Attergette, and Naples. Veneto museums are in Piazza Museo Schola, Pisa.
What to know: Four museums, three in Venice, two in Florence, are the only places you’ll see moto-art and bike-stuff, everything else taken up by cars. Though visitors to the Turin museum may enjoy the drama of the 24 motorcyclists hanging on a flywheel for hours, the rest of Italy might appreciate when half a dozen different diners come by their restaurants with the monarchs of the Maserati garage in tow.
Follow the money: Performing arts and fine art have joined automotive exhibitions in the cultural lineup of museums, though the former has the advantage of being typically free.
What to do: Tours and seminars are offered in Venice, Rome, and Turin, and learn about moto-art while munching on free pizza at dinner.
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