After 14 months and $90 million in dramatic renovations, the Petersen Automotive Museum is poised to reopen.
Hitting a deadline that many inside and outside the organization thought impossible, the overhauled Wilshire Boulevard car-centric exhibition space will reopen to the public Sunday after its extended closure. The media got a preview Thursday.
The makeover seeks to make the dated museum more appealing to younger audiences with a trove of interactive technology — and to give all patrons ample reason to make repeated visits, which few did before the renovations.
The reimagined space — wrapped in stainless-steel ribbons over a “hot-rod red” skin that has divided critics — is bigger and bolder. Museum leaders aimed for a world-class institution on a Miracle Mile stretch that already includes such attractions as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Page Museum, La Brea Tar Pits and the future Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.
Museum boosters set out to join the league of such revered institutions as the Ferrari and Maserati museums in Italy; the Porsche, BMW and Mercedes-Benz museums in Germany; and Washington D.C.’s Smithsonian and National Air and Space Museums and the Musee D’Orsay in Paris. […]
