Thinking before restoration

Another way of framing the title of this chapter would have been to ask the question: “what do we expect from our work on the automobile?” Or, “what added value are we looking for in the heritage or history of the automobile other than in financial terms?” The National Automobile Museum’s Schlumpf Collection in Mulhouse, France displays the world’s biggest collection of European cars and addresses these questions on a regular basis. ¹ The museum earned its reputation from the highly selective way in which the Schlumpf brothers set up their initial collection. Work on cars can take many forms – conservation, restoration, and the removal of previous restoration work – with the aim of presenting the object in a static or dynamic way. Cars are made of materials that are more or less stable over time and have joined collections containing a variety of materials dealt with in other cultural heritage sectors. They are also made to be “mobile,” which adds an extra difficulty to any decision to work on them. Unlike a painting, a car may occupy many different kinds of spaces. It’s where it should be in the street, in the garage, on the open road, at a show, etc., static or moving. This is all part of a car’s normal life. Moreover, it is made to be seen (from the outside) as much as for seeing people when you are at the wheel. This chapter aims to describe the decision-making processes used by the Musée Schlumpf in the 1960s and then by the “Musée de France,” as it is known today. ² This allows us to compare the usual practices of a collector from this period with those of a cultural institution; both have rarely given rise to a publication.