The Art of the Motorcycle was an exhibition that presented 114There were about 19 pre-20th century motorcycles shown in NYC along with the 95 in the official catalog, totaling 114 by most accounts. Some news media gave varying reports of the exact count (from 105 to as high as 140). Later exhibitions in other venues made substitutions, additions and deletions from the original collection. motorcycles chosen for their historic importance or design excellenceSawetz. "The Art of the Motorcycle is curated by Thomas Krens, Director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, with the help of a team of experts: curatorial advisors Ultan Guilfoyle of the Solomon Guggenheim Museum and University of Arizona Physics Professor Charles Falco; exhibition co-ordinator Manon Slome, and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao Curatorial Department. Works displayed are on loan from the Barber Vintage Motorsport Museum, the Munich Deutsches Museum, and the Otis Chandler Museum of Transportation and Wildlife, among others. [...] The exhibition brings together motorbikes renowned for their extraordinary design and innovative use of technology." in a display designed by Frank Gehry in the curved rotunda of the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City, running for three months in late 1998.Kinsella (1998) The exhibition attracted the largest crowds ever at that museum,Plagens (1998) and received mixed but positive reviews in the art world, with the exception of some art and social critics who rejected outright the existence of such a show at an institution like the Guggenheim, condemning it for excessive populism, and for being compromised by the financial influence of its sponsors.
The unusual move to place motorcycles in the Guggenheim came from director Thomas Krens, himself a motorcycling enthusiast, supported by a novel corporate tie-in with BMW. The motorcycles were chosen by experts including Krens, physicist and motorcycling historian Charles Falco, Guggenheim advisers Ultan Guilfoyle and Manon Slone, and others. The exhibition was described by historian Jeremy Packer as representing the end of a cycle of demonization and social rejection of motorcyclists, followed by acceptance and reintegration that had begun with the mythologized Hollister riot of 1947 and ended with the high-end marketing of motorcycles and the newly fashionable biker image of the 1980s and 1990s.Packer (2008) pp 154–159 Or at least the show served as "a long-overdue celebration of the sport, the machines and the pioneers they love."McCraw (1998)
The exhibition was the beginning of a new trend in profitable, blockbuster museum exhibits,Overholser (2008) foreshadowed by The Treasures of Tutankhamun tour of 1972–1979. Questions over the museum's relationship with corporate financial sponsors, both in this show and the tribute to the work of fashion designer Giorgio Armani (on the heels of a $15 million pledge to the museum from Mr. Armani) that followed shortly after, contributed to soul searching and the drafting of new ethical guidelines by the Association of Art Museum Directors.Vogel (1999)The Economist (2001)Green (2005)
Exhibition
The catalog of the exhibition covered a broad range of historic motorcycles starting from pre-20th century steam-powered velocipedes and tricycles, covering the earliest production motorcycles, Art Deco machines of the 20s and 30s, iconic Harley-Davidsons and Indians, British roadsters, and on up to the striking race replica street bikes of the 80s and 90s, ending with the MV Agusta F4. The idea of the show was to use motorcycles as a way of surveying the 20th century, exploring such themes as mobility and freedom in a way that cars can no longer do because they are too commonplace and utilitarian, while motorcycles retain a unique romance.
The interior of the Guggenheim's spiral ramp was covered in reflective stainless steel, a design by Frank Gehry, with a stylized pavement under the tires of the exhibits, and the bikes not leaned over on their kickstands, but rather standing up, as if in motion, held by thin wires and small clear plastic chocks under the wheels. Early examples from the 19th century, steam cycles and three wheelers mostly, were in a single room near the entrance. The first series produced motorcycle, and the first motorcycle included in the exhibition catalog proper, the 1894 Hildebrand & Wolfmüller stood outside the gallery.
The exhibition also featured a film exhibit, "The Motorcycle on Screen", with Easy Rider director Dennis Hopper speaking and Peter Fonda's "Captain America" being shown, as well as clips from that road movie, the Buster Keaton silent film Sherlock Jr., Andy Warhol's Bike Boy, and the TV show CHiPs.
The year 1998 coincided with the 50th anniversary of Honda motorcycles, the 75th of BMW motorcycles and the 95th of Harley-Davidson. Fifty-four collections loaned motorcycles, with the greatest number lent by the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum, and the Chandler Vintage Museum of Transportation and Wildlife.
BMW's interest in the world of fine art was not unprecedented, as that company had experimented with commissioning prominent artists to paint some of their race cars in the 1970s, leading to the collection, the BMW Art Cars,BMW in the Community (2009) becoming an ongoing project exhibited in the Louvre, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, and in 2009, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and New York's Grand Central Terminal.Powell (2009)
The Chicago Field Museum exhibition presented 72 of the original collection's motorcycles, and added details such as coverage of the Motor Maids women's motorcycling club founded after WWII. That show also added a participatory group motorcycle ride open to 2,000 bikers at a cost of US$50.
Popularity
Average attendance was at 45 percent higher than normal, with over 4,000 visitors daily,Weisberg (1998) and more than 5,000 people a day visiting on the weekends. Total attendance at the New York museum was 301,037, the largest in the history of the Guggenheim,Falco prompting the ad hoc show at the Chicago Field Museum, where advance tickets were sold for the first time.de LaFuente (1998) That show was followed by runs at Guggenheim Bilbao and Guggenheim Las Vegas. The name The Art of the Motorcycle and some associated media content was subsequently licensed for shows at Wonders: The Memphis International Cultural Series and the Orlando Museum of Art. Many of the same bikes appeared at these venues. Attendance at the Chicago exhibition was 320,000, the highest since The Treasures of Tutankhamun two decades before. Attendance at the next venue, Bilbao, was over 3/4 million, and at Las Vegas, over 250,000, making the tour's total attendance among the top 5 exhibitions ever in a museum. Many attendees attracted to these shows had never been to any museum before. Copies of the exhibition's lavish, large-format 427-page color catalog outsold any museum catalog yet,Kammen (2007) p. 288 with over 250,000 copies in print as of 2005.
Historical context In 1969 Thomas Hoving made a splash at the beginning of his career as director of the Metropolitan Museum of ArtBilwise (1999) with a blockbuster exhibition "Harlem on My Mind", featuring the previously overlooked art of African Americans in Harlem, New York City and was buffeted by criticism from many quarters. Regardless of what final judgments were made on that show, the impact of the large-scale, media extravaganza art museum exhibition had been felt widely in the museum world. Hoving would go on to a successful career as director of the Met that would reach a high point with the even larger The Treasures of Tutankhamun show, setting attendance records that are still unbroken.Kammen (2007) Hoving is credited with inventing modern museum populism in his King Tut show.
Other trends were at work as well, with a succession of public museum controversies over shocking art reaching back to the sixties, but coming to a head in the 1980s and 1990s with battles over art financed by the US National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). The fights over financing of shows by Robert Mapplethorpe and others drew bitter battle lines, with most artists, museum directors, gallery owners, and critics lining up to defend free expression and public financing of art with no restrictions on content. Opponents of this art were generally focused on cutting off funding for and evicting offensive art from public spaces, but there was also a positive side to their arguments, that the proper financing of art was in private sector and art which could successfully attract private financing was by definition deserving of being shown. Jacob Weisberg of Slate saw the efforts of directors like Krens to drive overflowing museum attendance, at the cost of showing something other than, in Weistberg's view, real art, as a demonstration that they are not an elitist institution, a direct answer, and capitulation, to conservative attacks on museums and the NEA for shows like Mapplethorpe's.
It was in 1989 and 1990, one decade before The Art of the Motorcycle, that Mapplethorpe's The Perfect Moment exhibition was hounded from one venue to another by outraged conservatives. It was at this point also when performance artist Karen Finley was denied NEA funding, and Andres Serrano's Piss Christ became another center of controversy. The 1990s saw one victory after another for the conservative movement in public art and museums.Plagens (1998) "And in a society where the political climate discourages public funding of 'elitist' cultural institutions, museums are thinking more about box office. So now they're selling tickets to bike lovers. Isn't 'diversity' supposed to be a good thing in America?" The economy was booming, and a kind of optimism was felt and expressed by such colorful figures as Malcolm Forbes, whose "Capitalist Tools Motorcycle Club" toured exotic venues celebrating both wealth and a love of fine motorcycles.
In the summer of 1999, the Brooklyn Museum did battle with then-New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani over the exhibition "Sensation", with charges of presenting sexually and religiously offensive art. In the face of all this, and the series of battles in the American culture war, The Art of the Motorcycle stood as a counterpoint, and possibly the high-water mark for the other kind of museum show: not offensive, not exclusive, but welcoming to the sensibilities of the general public. People who were baffled and irritated by modern and postmodern art could feel good about this show. The financing, while critics cried foul, was private. The show was by nature consented to directly by those who paid the bills, rather than passive taxpayers, and it was aimed at keeping the audience happy, rather than inciting rage with, say, US flags stuffed into toilets, as had been done in one famous museum exhibit decades earlier.
One decade after The Art of the Motorcycle opened, Thomas Krens has stepped aside from the top position at the Guggenheim.The New York Times staff (2009) The New York Times''' Holland Cotter has declared the blockbuster exhibition dead, victim of a weak economy that cannot afford such expensive excess, though this was on a positive note, suggesting a new and exuberant role for independent artists and smaller venues.Cotter (2009)
Critical reception Reaction to the exhibition came from two distinct camps of critics, with few having views from both. One camp rejected the very idea of The Art of the Motorcycle, having nothing to do with the machines on display in the Guggenheim or Thomas Krens' way of displaying them, nor his way of financing such a show. The other camp accepted in principle that such a show was acceptable, as art, or at least as subject for a museum like the Guggenheim, and from that basis formed a range of opinions about the quality of the show itself.
Outright condemnation