Bicycles : History - Beauty - Fantasy

National tour of the Pryor Dodge Collection

A travelling bicycle museum

This exhibition offers a glimpse of the 19th Century from the handlebars of a bicycle. Over 500 original artifacts from Europe and the U. S. portray the technical, social and esthetic aspects of this medium during its first 100 years, dating from 1819.

Viewers will discover the fascination the public had for this marvelous human-powered contraption. It was a liberating vehicle for women in the 1890's that facilitated freedom of movement & association and was instrumental in the introduction of "rational dress". The seemingly unlimited ways artists imagined bicycle use is colorfully represented in prints and posters.

Several of the exhibition's highlights include: a magnificent Michaux velocipede tricycle with a carved griffin's head, a Phantom velocipede, the first to have a rubber tire, an Ariel, the first manufactured high-wheeler, and a BSA safety, one of the earliest manufactured chain-drive bicycles. Novel use of materials is represented with a bentwood hickory and a bamboo-framed bicycle. There is a Columbia chainless bicycle that belonged to John D. Rockefeller, a c1905 Terrot Levocyclette, the earliest manufactured bicycle with 10 speeds, and a c1925 BSA racer that belonged to Henry Ford.

The exhibition ends with sections on the bicycle's contribution to the development of the automobile and the Wright brothers, who began in the bicycle trade.

See more exhibition photographs at the website of EYE MAGAZINE

Bicycles : History - Beauty - Fantasy, Future Venue:  (searching)

In the meantime, I am participating in the following travelling exhibition I helped organize:

The Bicycle Takes Off, 1865-1900, From Boneshaker to Boom

Oct. 2000   - April 2001       Museum of Our National Heritage, Lexington, Massachussetts

May 2001  - Sept. 2001      Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum, Norwalk , Connecticut

Oct. 2001   - March 2002   Queens Hall of Science, (Flushing Meadow) New York City

April 2002  - June 2002       Springfield Science Museum, Springfield, Massachussetts

Bicycles : History - Beauty - Fantasy has been previously exhibited at the following venues:

1983 OK Harris Gallery, New York City

1987 The Old Pueblo Museum, Tucson, Arizona

1993 The San Francisco Airport

The Bishop Museum, Honolulu, Hawaii

1994 The Whatcom Museum, Bellingham, Washington

Durham Western Heritage Museum, Omaha, Nebraska

1995 The Pink Palace Museum, Memphis, Tennessee

The Evansville Museum of Arts & Science, Evansville, Indiana

1996 PaineWebber Gallery, New York City

1997 The Morris Museum, Morristown, New Jersey

1997-8 The Design Museum, London, England

(It should be noted that a major part of the exhibition travelled to London, joined by numerous examples of 20th century bicycle design from other lenders in an exhibition entitled BikeCycles: A tour of bicycle design 1825-2000)

1998 San Diego Historical Society, San Diego, California

       UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, Los Angeles, California

1999 Oakland Museum of California

The Bicycle , by Pryor Dodge, Flammarion, publisher, 224 pp., 341 illustrations, 1996.