From the curation team that brought us the ‘Art of the Motorcycle’ exhibit at the Guggenheim Museum in 1998, comes a new motorcycle exhibit in a very different location. The Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA) in Brisbane, Australia will host ‘The Motorcycle: Design, Art, Desire’, and exhibition of over 100 motorcycles, from a c.1871 Perreaux steam velocipede (also seen at AotM, and on loan from the Musée Sceaux in Paris) to contemporary electric motorcycles of impeccable design.This exhibit reunites the Guggenheim curation team of Ultan Guilfoyle and Charles M. Falco on a new museum show for the first time since 1998. Ultan Guilfoyle is a filmmaker focussing primarily on architecture, who was given the task of organizing a groundbreaking motorcycle exhibition at the Guggenheim by then-Director Thomas Krens. Guilfoyle brought Charles M. Falco, a Professor of optical physics at the University of Arizona, on board to help with the monumental task of organizing the Art of the Motorcycle exhibition, which featured over 150 motorcycles in the stunning context of Frank Lloyd Wright’s New York City museum. The exhibit seemed made for the space, with its descending spiral galleries making a seamless 130-year chronological timeline, with the Perreaux steam cycle on the floor of the Guggenheim’s atrium as the star attraction. It remains the top-attended exhibit of that museum, and it’s a wonder it took over 20 years for another major museum to mount their own exhibit on the theme of motorcycles.Guilfoyle and Falco (both friends of the writer) have dropped hints for the past year that something big was coming in Brisbane, and now the news can be spread. The new exhibit at GoMA Brisbane (also called QAGoMA) will cover new ground from the AoTM exhibit, and is more focussed on motorcycle design per se, with an almost entirely new cast of ‘characters’, including hugely important developments in the motorcycle industry since 1998, including the then-nonexistent electric motorcycle scene. The exhibit will run from November 28 2020 through April 26 2021. Plenty of time to plan a visit, in other words!The exhibition has received significant support from the Queensland government, who expect a boost in tourism. Tourism Industry Development Minister Kate Jones explained support for ‘The Motorcycle: Design, Art, Desire’: “We invest in events because they support local jobs. Tourists want to experience something they can’t get anywhere else when they’re on holiday. Bringing this exhibition exclusively to Queensland will be a major drawcard for thousands of tourists. We expect this exhibition alone to generate more than 63,000 visitor nights for local businesses.”The AotM Guggenheim exhibit was criticized in its day for receiving major sponsorship from BMW, who included a display of newly available models in the Guggenheim: today such commercial sponsorships are common, and even vital given the drastic cuts in US gov’t funding of the arts since the 1980s. TheVintagent’s parent organization, the non-profit Motorcycle Arts Foundation, has itself gratefully accepted donations from commercial sponsors for our exhibits at the Petersen Museum in Los Angeles: such is the modern dilemna, and funding solution, for arts orgs. The Queensland gov’t understands that a major exhibition is an excellent tourist draw: with over 350,000 attendees to the AotM exhibit at the Guggenheim alone (the exhibit also traveled to Las Vegas, Chicago, and Bilbao, Spain), surely the impact on its various host cities’ economies was significant.The ‘Motorcycle: Design, Art, Desire’ exhibit will of course be accompanied by a gorgeous hardback catalogue: let’s hope Charles Falco updates his excellent bibliography found in the AotM catalogue! We’ll keep you posted on developments with the exhibit as we’re allowed.
The Majestic of the picture is a complete copy made recently , it’s better to say it.
The side-car is also a new one made from a Bernadet type made after ww2. The chassis look completely wrong.
The question is : did the fake sold for more money than the real thing?
Did a liar can say in some magazine that he restored her without contradiction?
Thank you: I thought it looked odd! The bodywork is different than most Majestics I’ve seen or ridden.
I was 15 when I saw the Art of the Motorcycle exhibition in Guggenheim Bilbao and it changed how I see the union between art and design.
Seeing together very rare machines like Captain America or the Britten with everyday seen machines as the aprilia moto 6.5 or the Ducati Monster gave me a new perspective on design.
Now I am an industrial designer and for sure that was a gamechanging moment for me so thanks! Keep with the great work!