Heritage on Wheels: Vintage Car Exhibition at
Nehru Science Centre, Mumbai
I crave for your indulgence in reading through
this long post, which is about the forthcoming Vintage Car exhibition that will
be opened tomorrow (15th March 2018) at 6 PM at the Nehru Science Centre.
The biennial Auto Expo held this year at Noida,
from Feb 9-14, 2018, attracted more than 600000 visitors to the exhibition, and
the event also witnessed extraordinary response on the social media with more
than 1.5 lakh tweets on its official hashtag. The automobile industry is a
marker to the design ingenuity and creativity of mankind. This industry is now
destined for a paradigm shift with an ever increasing brain power that is
continuing to be machined into the cars by their makers to make the next
generation cars - the thinking cars. Such next generation autonomous cars - the
“full self-driving car” - that Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced, are destined to
revolutionise the automobile industry over the next few decades.
Notwithstanding the rapid pace developments
taking place in the Auto industry, there has never been any fall in the
curiosity and interest among the people in wanting to see the ageless beauties
“the vintage motor vehicles” of yesteryears. It is for this reason that the
Nehru Science Centre, in collaboration with Vintage and Classic Car Club of
India (VCCCI), are organising the "Heritage on Wheels: Vintage Car"
exhibition at the Nehru Science Centre. This exhibition will be inaugurated by
Shri Satish Sahney Ji, former Commissioner of Police, and the Chief Executive
of Nehru Centre, Mumbai, on 15th March, at 6 PM at our centre.
On display will be some 30 plus ageless beauties
(cars and motorcycles) manufactured during the period from 1886 until the 1950s
including the Benz Patent-Motorwagen, the first ever car that was built by its
creator Karl Benz, in 1886. This car is regarded as one of the world's first
'production' automobile, which was designed to be propelled by an internal
combustion engine. Benz had unveiled his invention to the public on 3 July
1886, on the Ringstrasse in Mannheim, Germany. The other assortment of cars on
display include the Rolls Royce, Bentley, Humber, Daimler, Ford, Packard,
Chrysler etc. These cars belong to the period referred to as the golden age of
design in which some of the cars are so beautifully designed and exquisitely
engineered that they transcend mere transportation to become works of art. The
cars on display can be considered as rolling sculptures, and to see them is to
think, “That car belongs to an art gallery.”
The automobile design did not evolve in a vacuum.
The designers borrowed ideas and thoughts from other industries and from
popular culture. Whatever was handy, trendy or so called sexy, was fair game
for the designers to incorporate in their designs. They incorporated aspects of
Art Deco and Art Moderne into their styling in the 30's. Streamlining, a
catchword that had much less to do with aerodynamics than with shapes, was also
incorporated by the designers in these beauties, besides incorporating design
influences from nature.
The “Heritage on Wheels” exhibition presents a
range of artistically designed models of cars that were produced by
artistically creative team of inventors, manufacturers, engineers and designers
who combined to create these early automobile beauties, which continue to attract
people. The end-product reflects the marriage between the beauty of line and
mechanical ingenuity. These vintage cars of yesteryear’s come with speed and
elegance clubbed with a perfect combination of line and curve that makes these
cars so very beautiful and aesthetically stunning.
The early carmakers at the turn of the 20th
century not only cared for their cars to be reliable but were equally concerned
for the look of their machines. The cars of the last century looked more like
the horseless carriages. It took a while before these mechanised buggies
sprouted fixed roofs, and very much longer before all their many exposed parts
were pulled together in one more or less smoothly integrated designs. The book
“Moving Beauty: A Century in Automobile Design” by Musee Des Beaux-Arts De
Montreal chronicles the excellence achieved by the early car makers.
The importance of art, which was exemplified by
the early car designers, continue to remain relevant even in modern times. The
overwhelming success of most of Apple products owe their genesis to the
artistic looks that are embedded in the apple products which was the mantra of
its founder Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs likened himself and his employees to
artists; he deployed his mercurial personality in the ruthless way that artists
sometimes do. Steve Jobs, like the early car designers who used a perfect
combination of line and curve to make their car beautiful, cared about his
products the way that artists care about their art.
It has been more than 5 long years that I am
compelled by the Ministry of Culture, Government of India to shoulder the
additional responsibility of Director of NGMA Mumbai the premier Art
institution of the country, that too with zero benefits. But one thing, I must
confess, that I have learnt from this additional responsibility is to
appreciate art and care to look at art, which to me was completely alien until
not long ago. I abhorred art classes in early days and was one of those very
few who did not even doodle. But then as luck would have it, I am now heading
one of the premier art institute of the country and indulge in art talks with
leading artists and may be this has influenced me in organising some
interesting exhibitions like the recently concluded Death of Architecture,
Toilet Manifesto exhibitions at the Nehru Science Centre, which were more art
type exhibitions rather than science and the current Vintage car exhibition too
may fall under this category which our science centre has now started
organising very frequently.
FB friends are requested to visit the exhibition
which will be on display until the 1st of April 2018 at our centre
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