TURIN, Italy — A motorcycle and a legendary hot rod sit side by side at a red light. In the mid-1960s, during a stay in the United States, Gerald Laing found himself next to a modified 1932 Ford Roadster, transformed into a hot rod nicknamed Coffee Grinder. The encounter changed everything. The Scottish artist, who had become part of the American Pop Art scene alongside Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Robert Indiana, traded his Vincent Black Shadow motorcycle for the car, drawn to its embodiment of power, speed, mechanics and energy.

Laing’s art — with its saturated, brilliant colors, cinematic framing and almost symbiotic relationship between humans and machines, evident in works such as Deceleration and Strokers — captured the era’s fascination with motion and industrial progress. His work reinforces a larger idea: the automobile is no longer simply a means of transportation. It is also a powerful, complex and sophisticated storytelling device.

That connection between Pop Art and car culture lies at the heart of Gerald Laing’s work. Full Speed, will be opening on Oct. 28 at the National Automobile Museum in Turin, known as MAUTO. The exhibition coincides with the opening of a long weekend of Artissima and its satellite art fairs.

With 93 years of history, 11,500 square meters of exhibition space and about 400,000 visitors a year, MAUTO has been undergoing a transformation since 2023, both in appearance and in its underlying mission. Today, its collection of historic automobiles is increasingly engaging in a dialogue with contemporary art.

The conversation has become more ambitious, original and wide-ranging. The shift began under museum President Benedetto Camerana, who appointed Lorenza Bravetta, a manager with a background in photography and visual arts, as director.

The rethink starts with a changing relationship between people and cars. “The automobile is undergoing a profound transformation,” Camerana says. “For some segments of society, it is no longer an object of desire.” The dream that took hold in the 1950s has faded. “Some people have even become hostile toward it.”

The crisis is industrial and economic, too. Responding to these changes means redefining MAUTO’s identity. The Museum’s previous major redesign took place in 2011, under the direction of French-Swiss set designer François Confino.

Today, the automobile serves as a starting point for a broader exploration of modern and contemporary history. The goal, Bravetta says, is to examine society, economics, politics and culture through exhibitions, lectures, conferences, publications and educational programs. The approach is creating a virtuous circle: attendance is growing, visitors are getting younger, and the car is becoming a way “to talk about lifestyles, society and the environment.”

The Museum’s new section, The Future Unfolds, is a laboratory for the future of mobility — “an exhibition space, but also a place for conferences, research and meetings,” Bravetta says. Its themes include autonomous driving, electric propulsion, alternative energy sources such as hydrogen, new approaches to urban planning and artificial intelligence.

Camerana sees a future in which driving itself may disappear. Cars will become “traveling cells” where people can work, meet, watch movies or pursue other forms of entertainment, as if they were in a room. “The stationary becomes mobile,” he says. “It’s an architectural revolution, too.”

Art and automobiles will converge again at MAUTO beginning Oct. 28, with a program running through September 2027. The project, titled Convergenze (Convergences), brings together MAUTO and Rome’s MAXXI Contemporary Art Museum, following an inaugural edition with the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo.

Fourteen works by leading artists — including Alighiero Boetti, Gino De Dominicis, Anselm Kiefer, William Kentridge and Gerhard Richter — have been integrated into the Museum’s permanent displays. Rather than simply illustrating the history of the automobile, the works create striking, sometimes unexpected connections with the surrounding collections.

The Museum also invites artists and designers each year to draw inspiration from its cars, individual galleries or the building itself, exploring the echoes between automotive culture, architecture and contemporary art.

Cristian Chironi, for example, reimagined the Museum’s façade as the front end of a car, incorporating a Luce d’Artista: a luminous scanner that travels along a horizontal line, recalling the lighting effects of 1980s supercars.

On Thursday, Chironi returns to MAUTO with Carthage Drive, a documentary made with Domenico Palma. The film follows a journey through architecture and culture in the footsteps of Villa Baizeau, designed by Le Corbusier in 1930. At the center of the trip is a legendary Camaleonte, a Fiat 127 Special whose color changes to match the palettes of Le Corbusier’s architecture.

At MAUTO, the automobile is no longer just an object to be admired. It has become a lens through which to explore art, society, technology and the ways people imagine the future.

© All rights reserved.