Pop-up museum – cars – the power of less

Mobilizing the past Project: Future of the Past – [Link]Project: Future of Mobility – [Link]Project: JANUS Initiative – [Link] With the extraordinary Mark Gessler of the Historic Vehicle Association of America in the presentation of a pop-up museum of automotive history. Three cars sat in an exhibition for a week in Manhattan in the run…

Solon and Croesus – a myth about future time and foresight

  Solon the Athenian was renowned for his wisdom. Having set his city to rights with revolutionary new legislation, he set out on a ten year journey, that his constitution might take effect, and that he might find out about the world. In his travels Solon came to the court of Croesus, the most wealthy…

narrative fallacy and a fridge magnet

At the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Between 1880 and 1890 Vincent Van Gogh produced over 2000 artworks, and, so the story goes, died in poverty and mental illness, never having sold anything. Thereafter his genius was gradually discovered and he was acknowledged as a key figure in the history of art. Tortured and misunderstood…

Model T Ford at the Palace of Fine Arts

I was at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco this morning to welcome the arrival of the Historic Vehicle Association of America in their 1915 Model T Ford – culmination of a 3600 mile drive from Detroit following the tracks of Edsel Ford who made the same road trip a century ago. He…

Pebble Beach 2015 – history as advocacy

Yesterday I was again at Pebble Beach Concours d’Élegance – that rather exclusive and impressive gathering of car collectors and connoisseurs [Link] I was there to wind up our Stanford class concerned with the historical significance of the automobile (Jon Feiber, David Kelley, Reilly Brennan and myself running ME200). Since April we have been debating…