![Petersen Automotive Museum exterior]()
Adrian Van Anz painted a motorcycle to look like a museum. If it makes a difference, it’s one of the fastest museums in the country. The Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles is home to 300,000 square feet of hundreds of classic and historic cars and recently closed for a year-long, $125 million renovation.
Terry Karges, the museum’s executive director, reached out to Van Anz of AVA Velocity Works in Los Angeles with the opportunity of full artistic license to apply a custom paint job on an electric Zero DS. Van Anz recreated the museum’s unique architecture on the machine.
“I was trying to replicate the big, red box of the Petersen,” Van Anz says. “The museum is all about energy, and there’s a big, black of box of energy on the
Zero. I wanted the bike to bring the form and function together of the museum.”
That form refers to the big, red corner of the museum’s renovation plan. Enveloping that bright coloring is a swooping, dark gray metal exterior, wrapped like an octopus over the building. Van Anz put that concept on the bike.
![Petersen Zero DS electric motorcycle]()
“I wanted to create more of a flow to the bike,” he says, “so it didn’t just look like independent parts put together. The custom paint brought out some of the nuances in the bike.”
Van Anz also wanted the custom job to replicate where the Petersen is going in the future. “I wanted it to look like it was drawn as one cohesive piece,” he says, “which is the real tie-in for the museum.”
The Petersen will re-open on December 1, 2015, and feature 22 new exhibits. Multimedia will play an integral role. “There are currently seven flat-screen televisions,” Karges says, “and the new museum will have 175. Our job is to tell stories about the cars.”
Those cars currently include Saddam Hussein’s limo, which was smuggled out of Jordan, Elvis’ mustard-yellow 1971 De Tomaso Pantera that he allegedly shot multiple times with a gun, a Popemobile from Mexico, a Batmobile, and the Jaguar from the James Bond film
Die Another Day.
“It will be one of the world’s top two or three automotive museums,” Karges says. “With such a varied collection, we’re the Switzerland of automotive museums.”
![Petersen Automotive Museum.]()
![Petersen Zero DS photo #1]()
![Petersen Zero DS photo #2]()
![Petersen Zero DS photo #3]()
![Petersen Zero DS photo #4]()
![Artist's conception.]()
![Zero DS studio side view.]()
Adrian Van Anz painted a motorcycle to look like a museum. If it makes a difference, it’s one of the fastest museums in the country. The Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles is home to 300,000 square feet of hundreds of classic and historic cars and recently closed for a year-long, $125 million renovation.
Terry Karges, the museum’s executive director, reached out to Van Anz of AVA Velocity Works in Los Angeles with the opportunity of full artistic license to apply a custom paint job on an electric Zero DS. Van Anz recreated the museum’s unique architecture on the machine.
“I was trying to replicate the big, red box of the Petersen,” Van Anz says. “The museum is all about energy, and there’s a big, black of box of energy on the Zero. I wanted the bike to bring the form and function together of the museum.”
That form refers to the big, red corner of the museum’s renovation plan. Enveloping that bright coloring is a swooping, dark gray metal exterior, wrapped like an octopus over the building. Van Anz put that concept on the bike.
“I wanted to create more of a flow to the bike,” he says, “so it didn’t just look like independent parts put together. The custom paint brought out some of the nuances in the bike.”
Van Anz also wanted the custom job to replicate where the Petersen is going in the future. “I wanted it to look like it was drawn as one cohesive piece,” he says, “which is the real tie-in for the museum.”
The Petersen will re-open on December 1, 2015, and feature 22 new exhibits. Multimedia will play an integral role. “There are currently seven flat-screen televisions,” Karges says, “and the new museum will have 175. Our job is to tell stories about the cars.”
Those cars currently include Saddam Hussein’s limo, which was smuggled out of Jordan, Elvis’ mustard-yellow 1971 De Tomaso Pantera that he allegedly shot multiple times with a gun, a Popemobile from Mexico, a Batmobile, and the Jaguar from the James Bond film Die Another Day.
“It will be one of the world’s top two or three automotive museums,” Karges says. “With such a varied collection, we’re the Switzerland of automotive museums.”
