Holy Toledo! Car art coming to museum

TOLEDO, Ohio — Car culture is an inextricable part of the Midwest's identity, closely associated with its livelihood, labor and community.

The rise of the automobile as a popular symbol of American culture will be explored in “Life Is a Highway: Art and American Car Culture,” an upcoming exhibit at the Toledo Museum of Art.

The exhibition will feature roughly 125 works of art in a wide variety of media, including painting, sculpture, photography, film, prints and drawings. Curators say it will feature a diversity of artists and perspectives, drawn from the museum's collection along with important loans from many other North American institutions.

This project is the first U.S. exhibition to provide an inclusive, historical overview of artists inspired by American car culture, with an emphasis on the Midwest region, the museum said in a news release.

A significant portion of Toledo's economy has been related to the automotive industry since the beginning of the 20th century, said Robin Reisenfeld, the museum's works on paper curator who is putting together the exhibit. It is the home of two production facilities known as the Toledo Complex, an automobile factory that began assembling Willys-Overland vehicles as early as 1910. Since 1940, Jeeps have been assembled in the plant, which is now owned by Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. Powertrain Toledo, a General Motors (GM) transmission factory, was founded in 1916 and has been the production site for many of GM's transmissions.

“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,” said Brian Kennedy, TMA's Edward Drummond and Florence Scott Libbey director.

As a key element of the postwar boom economy of the 1950s, the automobile quickly became a symbol of freedom, individualism, renewal and middle-class prosperity. Its mythic status will be examined across social, aesthetic, environmental and industrial dimensions with images that both celebrate and critique its legacy.