The Allure of the Automobile

http://specialexhibitions.pam.org/allure/

I'm still reviewing some past activities, but this week and next week's posts were local. This is an exhibit we attended in 2011.

There are a few ways in my family where I am the odd one. One is that I am not into cars.

It's not just the not driving thing. I am amazed sometimes at my sisters' abilities to recognize different models and know things about them. I don't see them reading car magazines, but it feels like they might. I can have gone places with people multiple times and still have no idea what they drive. I just don't notice. Sometimes I will notice something that is kind of extreme. For example, I noticed the first time I saw a Scion Xb, because it was so boxy.

All of this made the Allure of the Automobile exhibit at the Portland Art Museum a good fit for us. My sisters love cars, and I can appreciate the unusual ones, and this was a normal meeting ground.

Some were a little boxy. Many of these models were from fairly early in the history of manufacturing, and had come from other industries. So, looking at one really chunky car and seeing that it came from a company that also made refrigerators kind of made sense, but it also made sense to see a car from the '50s that looked like it could rocket to the moon.

Some of them also had interesting pasts, like having belonged to Steve McQueen.

So this was an exhibit that all of us could enjoy, and that leaves me open to visiting other automobile exhibits should the opportunity present itself.