Since the first automobiles hit the road over a century ago, cars have left a lasting imprint on the design of our built environment. For both better and worse, they have fundamentally reshaped the ways in which we live, work, and enjoy ourselves. Cars have altered our ideas about mobility, connecting us across great distances at ever greater speeds. Automania takes an in-depth look at an object that has inspired countless examples of innovation, social transformation, and critical debate among designers and artists working in varied media.

This exhibition addresses the conflicted feelings—compulsion, fixation, desire, and rage—that developed in response to cars and car culture in the 20th century. Examining automobiles as both modern industrial products and style icons, it also explores their adverse impact on roads and streets, public health, and the planet’s ecosystems.

Automania brings together cars and car parts, architectural models, films, photographs, posters, paintings, and sculptures, ranging from Lily Reich’s 1930s designs for a tubular steel car seat to Andy Warhol’s Orange Car Crash Fourteen Times. In the Museum’s Sculpture Garden, five cars, including a recently acquired Citroën DS 23 sedan, will invite visitors to take an up-close view of the machines that architect Le Corbusier compared to ancient Greek temples and critic Roland Barthes likened to “the great Gothic cathedrals…the supreme creation of an era.”

A film program in the Debra and Leon Black Family Film Center will accompany the presentation of Automania.

Organized by Juliet Kinchin, Curator, Paul Galloway, Collection Specialist, and Andrew Gardner, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Architecture and Design.

Exhibition Date: July 4, 2021 – January 2, 2022 

Location: MoMA, Floor 1, Sculpture Garden (The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden)

Floor 3, 3 North (The Philip Johnson Galleries) 

Admission:

Adults: $25

Seniors: $18 (65 and over with ID)

Visitors with disabilities: $18

Students: $14 (Full-time with ID)

Children: Free (16 and under) 

Members: Free

Tickets include admission to all galleries and special exhibitions.

Entry is by advance timed ticket only. Tickets must be reserved online and will not be available at the Museum.

Members do not need to book in advance. An allocation of timed tickets is reserved for members each hour; guest privileges apply.

Free admission for NYC’s healthcare workers, from Oct 1, 2020 through Sep 30, 2021, is made possible by UNIQLO.

Admission is free for a caregiver accompanying a visitor with a disability. 

Reserve timed tickets 

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Images provided by AmericanTowns.com, Ticketmaster