Future Retro
Drawings from the Great Age of American Automobiles
Selected from the Jean S. and Frederic A. Sharf Collection Photography by Mark Wallison, courtesy of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston The exhibition Future Retro: Drawings From the Great Age of American Automobiles, organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, is on display through May 13, 2018, at the Eustis Estate Museum and Study Center in Milton, Massachusetts. The design and manufacture of automobiles in the United States, already a significant industrial force prior to 1940, reached new heights in the years immediately following World War II. Americans, both the soldiers abroad and those who had endured the war’s hardships on the home front, had fought for an ideal that came to be known as the “American Dream,” one characterized by prosperity, a family, and a home of one’s own. Part and parcel of this ideal was ownership of a new car, and Detroit rushed to meet the demand. The great age of American automobile design emerged as a response to this new vision of the American way of life. —Frederic A. Sharf (1934-2017), Curator From the exhibition catalogue Future Retro: Drawings from the Great Age of American Automobiles (2005, MFA Publications, a division of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston).
Peter Wozena made this concept drawing of a Cadillac Coupe de Sabre in 1950. HistoricNewEngland.org 1