Morton Street Partners is an innovative venture blending contemporary art with collectible cars, situated in a historic West Village carriage house. This 3,000-square-foot space serves as both a gallery and a garage, showcasing automobiles as both art and investment. Founded by car aficionados Tom Hale, Jake Auerbach, and art historian Benjamin Tarlow, the project offers a unique take on automotive design, elevating cars to a fine art stature. Tarlow specializes in midcentury sports and competition cars with an academic background in art history and conservation. Formerly an independent broker in the Hudson Valley, he is an avid vintage racer, motorsport organizer, and car builder. Learn more about Benjamin Tarlow and how he turns cars into art in today’s Maker Monday.
“Winter Surf” is an exhibition showcasing the inventive mid-twentieth century vehicle design, from iconic dune-buggies to Steve McQueen’s Meyers Manx, highlighting the era’s engineering prowess and transatlantic design influences.
Andrew Joseph: Define your work in three words.
Benjamin Tarlow: Collecting, Art, Automobiles. I love distilling our business down to its core elements. We exist to contextualize the world’s most extraordinary and significant vehicles in an art and design sphere. When you deal, as we do, with one-off design studies, daring prototypes, and incredibly obscure corners of the automotive realm, the challenge is to impart their unique narratives and origins to our audience. As curators and collection managers, we also need to appraise, evaluate, and transact these very specific cars. It’s a wonderful and creative challenge to approach automobiles in this way.
AJ: What is your biggest fear?
BT: I worry about attrition in the special car space, specifically the knowledge and experience deficit we’re slowly experiencing as a generation of mechanics, craftsmen, and artisans retire and pass away. It’s really hard to replace that, and of course, these special objects will hopefully outlive us all, so their care and preservation is always a central concern.
“Unsafe At Any Speed” features the work of around 40 artists and designers covering nearly every inch of Morton’s 3,000+ sq ft gallery interior. Curated by Kenny Schachter, he sourced much of the work after seeing it first shared online.
AJ: Style (or design) icon?
BT: We’ve been doing a lot recently with Luigi Colani’s work, it’s quite a journey diving into the variety of projects he created, from wildly futuristic cars to spaceships to custom kitchens. The man himself was a character, and it would have been fascinating to meet him.
AJ: Tell us the best thing that happened to you this month.
BT: I love the little moments here on Morton Street, in particular the engagement with the broader NYC community. Having a group of kids walk past when we’re loading something really cool into the space is always fun. Or, this month in particular, we had a couple of “special guest” Mercedes AMG products in the space temporarily. Our local FedEx delivery man came across them while dropping off a package and it turns out he is an absolute encyclopedia regarding those cars. Really fun to share that exciting moment with him.
“Art is the Process” is an innovative exhibition where artists Greg Anagnostopoulos, Daniel Arsham and guests dissect and reconstruct a 1987 Porsche 911 Carrera 3.2, delving into the synergy of art, design, and technology.
AJ: If you had one more hour in the day what would you do with it?
BT: It would definitely be spent indulging in any number of rabbit holes, usually via the growing collection of books and reference material we’re hoarding in the office. I tend to flip through things quickly during the day, and I’m always making mental notes to double back and read or observe in more detail. It’s so easy to get lost in them.
AJ: What are you most proud of?
BT: After a little over a year in our space and multiple build-outs, I’m still most proud of the shows we’ve been able to pull together, often on incredibly tight timelines. Whether it’s the colorful and buzzy group show we put on with Kenny Schachter, or the desert moonscape (and five thousand pounds of sand) for our collaborative show with Meyers Manx, the end result is always so much more than we ever could have imagined. As fun as the creative process is, there’s such a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment when it all comes together. Stay tuned for more…
About the Maker | Morton St. Partners has launched its presence in the West Village with “Unsafe At Any Speed,” an inaugural exhibition by art-world maverick Kenny Schachter, setting the tone for its future as a hub for art and automobile fusion. As collectible cars achieve record auction prices and collaborations between premier car makers and artists become more common, Morton St. Partners is poised to capitalize on this growing appreciation for car design as an art form. Their 3,000 square-foot space at 16 Morton Street, a former 19th-century carriage house, is uniquely adapted for their vision, featuring a lofted white cube capable of displaying cars as part of each exhibit, underscored by the distinctive working garage door façade. This venue aims to be a global stage for artists, designers, and venerable institutions, reflecting the burgeoning integration of automotive excellence with contemporary art.
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