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24/08/2023 7:55 pm
Some of the Zeppelin stories are so dramatic - and romantic, too. The Graf Zeppelin's circumnavigation of the globe being the high-point.
It was an impressive and awe-ispiring method of travel back then. And somewhere I have some pictures of the giants LZ-127 and LZ-129 visting the U.S. I thiink my father talked about seeing the gigantic LZ-127 Graf Zeppelin over the Chicago suburb of Riverside as it headed to Chicago in 1929, I believe. It looked miles long !
The follow on LZ-130 was a bit bigger but of the same class (and LZ-131 was begun), but by that time WWII was looming, people had lost some faith in drigibles and the U.S. had embargoed helium to Nazi Germany.
However, in the field of UFO/flying saucers, there have been immense oblong/cigar shaped objects reportedly sighted called "Cloud cigars", with some of the most gigantic being seen during the 1954 French sightings, the 1948 Chiles and Whitted airline case , the JAL 747 case over Alaska and a huge object seem in the southwestern United States by pilots and radars in May, 1995.
24/08/2023 8:32 pm
@mikedetorrice I shall look into these curious sightings - thanks for the heads-up. I feel slightly bereft that others have seen these magnificent pieces of engineering and I haven't: I feel that they must be among the wonders of the world. It breaks my heart that Goring, being an aeroplane modernist, hated dirigibles - referring to them as "those gas-bags", and had the Graf Zeppelin II destroyed. He claimed it was too big a target, and of course he was right. But it's still a pity. And of course the U.S.A. were not short of their own dirigible adventures, with their aircraft carrying airships USS Akron (ZRS-4) and Macon (ZRS-5).
24/08/2023 8:51 pm
The Cord is IMHO one of the most beautiful cars ever made. As I have gotten older, I have really appreciated the design even more. I have just returned from a Mid-West Car Museum trip where I saw at least 10 examples of this beautiful work-of-art.
John, I believe it was the first ever automobile to be accepted into an art gallery as a work of art when MOMA displayed it in about 1954 - but this is from memory and so would need to be verified.
Topic starter
24/08/2023 9:55 pm
That is a wonderfully evocative, yet ultimately tragic look (and with some color film) at the huge German Zeppelins. It was also astonishing the the huge American craft the Arkron and the Macon, could also carry aircraft aboard. It was ultimately perhaps unfortunate for nearly all involved.
In the field of automobiles, there is also a cost sometimes with being the first, or too early, with a particular item or configuration. Sometimes actual production (and technology) needs to catch up to make something commercially viable. Government edicts and other such forcing of technology, cost and producibility can introduce poor results.
Charles Rockett reacted
25/08/2023 8:47 am
The Cord is IMHO one of the most beautiful cars ever made. As I have gotten older, I have really appreciated the design even more. I have just returned from a Mid-West Car Museum trip where I saw at least 10 examples of this beautiful work-of-art.
John, I believe it was the first ever automobile to be accepted into an art gallery as a work of art when MOMA displayed it in about 1954 - but this is from memory and so would need to be verified.
The first automobile acquisition at MOMA was the beautiuful Cisitalia 202 - I had a poster of it on my wall! https://www.moma.org/collection/works/3498 This was the 1970s so I'll have to dig around to see what the first car displayed there was! Here is the DUGU version based on the Turin Museum example.
photo: hobbyDB
25/08/2023 9:29 am
@karl Hey Karl, thank you for putting us right on this point a further search has dug-up the following MoMA post, confirming that the first automobile purchased for their standing collection was indeed your Cisitalia. https://www.motortrend.com/features/moma-cars-permenent-collection-museum-modern-art/
MoMA's interest in automobiles goes back to 1951, when the museum had its first car exhibition. Those early exhibitions approached the subject largely from an aesthetic standpoint.
But when the museum undertook to add the first car to its design collection—which did not happen until decades later—the qualifications went much further, explains Paul Galloway, the collection specialist at MoMA who oversees architecture and design. "Increasingly over the years, we've come to see cars as objects with a multiplicity of meanings beyond just aesthetics. There's engineering, of course, and how they tap into broader stories. It's how they look, how they're put together, and how they're objects of industrial design but also great magnets of cultural history."
"The key that we always try to emphasize to people is that MoMA doesn't have a car collection, we have a design collection, and in that design collection there are some cars," he says. Here, Galloway takes us through the nine vehicles currently in MoMA's design collection, and explains what makes each one, officially, a work of modern art.
1946 Cisitalia 202 GT (Acquired 1972)
"The Cisitalia was the first car that was acquired, back in 1972, and that was the first time that an art museum in the U.S. put a car into its collection. The Cisitalia is a really incredible car—it's kind of an outlier in our collection because it's one of the rarest cars. Every other car is the opposite of rare, they're very common, like a Jeep ora Beetle. But the Cisitalia, only around 200 of those were made. They were handmade, and it was a much more of craft-oriented process. The same Cisitalia model actually was included in the very first car exhibition at the museum in 1951. We acquired this one in 1972—it was a barn find that Pininfarina restored for us. The interest in this one was [driven by] Pininfarina, who is a legend and an important figure in car design. But in particular the 202 GT was a car in which the monocoque construction, the unitized shell, and the beautiful sculptural form really kind of marry engineering to overall shape in a highly aesthetic package."
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Further digging uncovers images from MoMA's exhibition that I initially remembered "8 Automobiles" (MoMA Exh. #488, August 28–November 11, 1951) Including what looks to me like the Cord Westchester Sedan of our interest in the present thread, in the first image. Also, is it your Cisitalia we see in the same 1951 exhibition, third photograph RHS ?
John Kuvakas reacted
25/08/2023 10:17 am
That's it! You found my old poster! 😍
Further further digging found the MOMA press release for the 1951 show - mentions the "1937 Cord" near the bottom! "The Oord has pontoon fenders contrasting with a coffin-shaped hood..." Bringing this thread back to Mike's original photos! 😎
Charles Rockett and John Kuvakas reacted
Topic starter
25/08/2023 2:01 pm
Lol, thanks, Karl. The Cisitalia is a beautiful car and many automobiles can certainly almost be considered art/sculpture in a way. There are a lot of great automotive examples.
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