CMU School of Drama


Friday, September 23, 2016

The Petersen Re-Emerges

News | MATT Construction: In spite of the Petersen’s rich history in Los Angeles, and its amazing location, smack-dab in the middle of Southern-California-the-Car-Culture-Capital-of-the-World, before 2016, the most visitors the Petersen had received in a single year was 138,000. Now with a finely-tuned re-vision and a new racing team, the landmark museum is ready to set new records.

4 comments:

jcmertz said...

I'm really impressed with how much press the Petersen continues to get, even now as we near a year since its reopening. The Petersen renovation is a project that holds a lot of sentiment for me because it is marked the first time something I helped build was photographed and shared regularly and nationally. While being a part of producing theater at school has always been fun for me, and I have always been excited to be a part of projects that reach a wide audience, it wasn't until the Petersen project that I grasped how much of an impact the work we do can have. In another vein, the work I did on the Petersen was some of the most boring and thankless work I have ever done, but seeing pictures of the finished exhibits make me happy that I put in the work, and encourages me to put in the hard, crappy work on the project that I believe in, so that years later I can come back and say, "I helped make that happen" and claim that as my reward.

Unknown said...

This sounds like some really good news for the Peterson. The other good news is that I opened this article solely based on the thumbnail, which I thought looked really, really cool. Which I guess is the point of the building. Looking through the images in the article I am struck with just how beautiful the building really is. I am seriously not a car person but if I ever saw that building I would visit just to see what the inside looks like. It is truly an inspired vision and it’s wonderful to see it come together so well from the drawing board to the final product it seems a fantastic job was done all around. I hope I’ll get to visit and experience this truly gorgeous building in real life someday. Until then I guess I’ll just have to content myself with looking at pretty pictures of this beautiful monument.

Unknown said...

I haven’t heard of the Petersen before, but that might be in the fact that I just don’t watch racing. With the design of this building with its striking and bold exterior. It would seem that I could make a little bit of time for a race. Taking a look on the inside is a thing of beauty. I’m always up for examining a well built machine, and this place seems to have plenty of that to go around. With each vehicle there being highlighted in glory to commemorate the past. That’s exactly what we do when something or someone has done something great, and accomplished a feat. We go out and celebrate it or them, and make something to remember them by so that even after their journey has ended we can always look back on the past. This does the same for the company to show their progressions over time, and what they hope to accomplish in the future.

Claire Krueger said...

I was attracted to the picture assuming it was a museum but was a little disappointed to read about one of my least favorite subjects, cars. Never the less it was interesting to read about all the different types of companies contracted in order to put the museum together, and despite my lack of interest I would probably go just to see the cars used in Hollywood films. I was examining the before and after pictures of The Peterson and I agree with the renovation. The previous museum looked like a car dealership, and with the renovations it looks interesting and exciting, an exterior bond to attract patrons to the museum. I think there is a lot to be learned from the foresight the planners did for technology. Plan for the unforeseeable changes by making the program easily adaptable, in other words, spend short term save long term. A decision that will probably add many years on the museum lifeline.