On a chilly Southern California evening last April, a noted collector of French Art Deco objets d’art hosted numerous guests and journalists to celebrate the opening of his eponymous exhibition space, the Mullin Automotive Museum. “My idea was to see if we couldn’t recreate the feel of the Paris Exhibition,” said Peter Mullin of the design of his new facility, which occupies the building that once housed the car collection of former Los Angeles Times publisher Otis Chandler. Mullin is referring to L’Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes, the 1925 Parisian exhibition of predominantly French fashion and commercial design that proved to be the opening salvo and namesake of the Art Deco movement.

In Mullin’s conception, the beautiful custom-built automobiles that he collects are a tightly woven thread of the cultural fabric of Art Deco. Though the sleek Delahaye and Bugatti motorcars that grace the Mullin Museum are undeniably breathtaking, their actual presence at the 1925 Paris Exhibition is somewhat less certain. While art historians routinely list glassware, metalwork, furniture and graphic posters among the notable domains of the Art Deco style, automobiles are seldom mentioned in more than passing comments, usually with respect to Lalique hood ornaments or the movement’s transference of industrial themes to household items.

Part of the automobile’s general omission from such discussions in years past could be attributed to its still-developing unrealized status as an objet d’art. “Twenty years ago, people didn’t use the kind of language that they do now about cars as art,” explains Andrew Reilly, curator of the Mullin Museum. The last five years, in particular, have witnessed a sharp increase in art museum exhibits dedicated to automobile design. Initiated by the Boston Museum of Fine Art’s 2005 exhibit showcasing the car collection of Ralph Lauren, this trend gained momentum with the Phoenix Art Museum’s 2007 “Curves of Steel” exhibit, and the recent “Allure of the Automobile” exhibit at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. Mullin points out that his museum can be viewed as the latest entry in this arc of exhibits.