NEW YORK CITY -- Powerful machines and vivid images of the biker lifestyle are the themes for "The Art of the Motorcycle," an immensely popular summer exhibition at New York's Guggenheim Museum, where more than 100 superbly-engineered examples will be on view in the Rotunda and Tower galleries through September 20.

Frank O. Gehry, the well-known architect responsible for the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, also designed the exhibition installation using basic industrial materials such as rubber and stainless steel.

While everyone may not collect vintage motorcycles, nearly everyone over 16 has a motorcycle story they could tell. Whether it was 1946, 1966, or 1986, there was the dangerous cycle your parents would never let you buy, or Ī for women Ī that bad boy on a bike you were forbidden to date. If you can still sing the lyrics to "Born to be Wild," this is the show for you.

"You scratch the surface and everybody has ridden a bike," admits Matthew Drutt, who edited the show's 600-page catalogue as well as a lighter pop culture volume called Motorcycle Mania: The Biker Book. "The show presents motorcycles as art objects, but they're also things that people can imagine themselves as riding. It's almost like looking at clothes. Fashion is about design, but it's also about persona and image. Motorcycles are certainly about image and character and identity."

The exhibition was organized and curated by Thomas Krens, the museum's director, who worked with curatorial advisors Ultan Guilfoyle and Charles Falco, a professor of physics at the University of Arizona and noted motorcycle historian.

Guilfoyle sees the show's purpose in broad terms, "It wasn't about an enthusiasm for motorcycles per se," he said, "but about a real desire to find a way through the Twentieth Century. Quite some time ago we had this notion of surveying the century in a different way, and Tom Krens came up with the idea of motorcycles."

Guilfoyle continues, "Without overstretching it, the larger themes of the century -- mobility, freedom, rebellion -- and the cultural themes of love, death, sex, and danger, which run through films and literature, these are all themes that are readily personified by the motorcycle in a way that were once also personified or exemplified in cars. But cars have now become simply another thing; they have lost their intrinsic romance because they're utilitarian objects and we use them every day. Motorcycles uniquely still retain those mythologies."

The museum put a high priority on finding examples which were not only rare or collectible but could stand on their own as aesthetic designs. The organizing team also looked for machines which had cultural and historical significance. For example, Guilfoyle points out, "The Honda 750 was the bike that, at a stroke, undermined the mad, bad, and dangerous-to-know image of The Wild One and allowed Honda to come in and dominate the U.S. market in the way that no other manufacturer had. That little humble object has sold 2.5 million and has been a key element in the mobility of millions of people in Europe and the Third World, as well."

The team's original want list of around 300 historically and artistically significant motorcycles was eventually narrowed down to about 100 machines loaned by specialist institutions such at the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum in Birmingham, Ala. and the Otis Chandler Museum of Transportation and Wildlife in Oxnard, Calif. As the Barber's executive director Jeff Ray points out, "We could offer them one-stop shopping to complete their list of bikes."

From the Alabama collection came a 1956 MV Agusta 500 Grand Prix racer that John Surtees used to win the world championship and a 1957 Harley-Davidson KR 750cc that won Roger Reiman the first super speedway motorcycle race held at Daytona. The exhibition also includes early designs, such as a 1894 Hildebrand & Wolfmuller from Germany and a 1901 Indian Single 260cc. Matthew Drutt explains, however, "Every important bike in the history of motorcycles is not in the show -- that's not the point. It's not `The History of the Motorcycle' but `The Art of the Motorcycle.' The emphasis is on design."

At the Guggenheim, the biker image was explored during the July in "The Motorcycle on Screen," a series of 40 films from classics like "The Wild One" (1954) with a young Marlon Brando to more obscure features such as the Japanese "Bomber Bikers of Shonan" (1986).

The highlight was "An Evening with Dennis Hopper," on July 28, during which the actor discussed the making of the "Easy Rider" (1969) in which he co-starred with Peter Fonda. One of the most entertaining sections of Motorcycle Mania: The Biker Book contains dozens of additional photos of riders on film from cocky Erik Estrada in the TV series CHIPs to singing cyclist Prince in Purple Rain to Arnold Schwarzenegger as the emotionless Terminator.

Needless to say, the Guggenheim has gained a new group of non-traditional visitors, including motorcycle riders and collectors, drawn by the special nature of this exhibition. Ray helped install the machines loaned by the Barber and is familiar with the current market for vintage models.

"The interesting part about the motorcycle is that, somewhere down the line, everyone has a story about an adventure in their life involving a bike," he says. "There are a lot of guys in their forties and fifties who are actually retro-ing back to bikes. They have the financial ability to own what they want now, a bike just like they had in college or the one they couldn't afford then but finally can have. These are sometimes the last people you would think of as bike owners: professors, attorneys, doctors. They're not just greasy guys riding around on Harley-Davidsons making a lot of noise."

"Bikes do not fluctuate with the market as much as vintage cars do -- it's more of an international market," he continues. "The motorcycle, in our experience in the last ten years, has enjoyed a steady increase in value with some strong leaps forward. So just from an investment standpoint, I'd much rather put my money in motorcycles than in cars. They appeal to a lot of people because you could put these things in your living room as well as the garage. With the Guggenheim Museum and the Birmingham Museum recognizing them as art, you'll see a lot more of that."

If You Go:

Through September 20, "The Art of the Motorcycle" continues at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue (at 89th Street). Hours are Sunday to Wednesday 10 am to 6 pm; closed Thursday; Friday & Saturday 10 am to 8 pm. Telpehone 212/423-3500.

The Art of the Motorcycle, edited by Matthew Drutt, contains illustrated essays on the design and social history of the motorcycle and can be ordered directly from the museum store for $85 hardcover and $45 softbound; call 800/329-6109. Also available from the Guggenheim for $27.50 is Motorcycle Mania: The Biker Book, published by the museum in association with Universe Books. This smaller volume explore the popular culture aspects of motorcycle ownership.

BIRMINGHAM, ALA. -- A second exhibition, "Art on Wheels: Selections from the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum is on display through September 6 at the Birmingham Museum of Art in Alabama. While it shares artistic and cultural goals with the New York show, the Birmingham installation conforms to a completely different structural plan.

David Moos, curator of paintings and sculpture, is pleased with the result. "As it's set up now, we have 25 pristine, gleaming, beautiful motorcycles from 1905 to 1996 arrayed in our museum," he says. Unlike the Guggenheim, which has them sequestered on the ramp, ours are much more tangibly interacting with the art. It's an ideal situation because we have a long hallway that spans one length of the museum, running from where we keep the Kress Collection of Renaissance painting through Nineteenth Century European into Contemporary."

At beginning of the hall, museum-goers can view the earliest bike in the exhibition, a 1905 Erie, while a 1996 Britten V-1000 from New Zealand stands at the far end by the Twentieth Century galleries. Moos continues, "So you have this excursion through the visual culture of the West with a spine of motorcycles that leads you through that history." Other bikes on display include a 1920 Harley-Davidson 8-valve Factory Board Track Racer, a 1962 Norton Manx from England, and a 1974 Ducati 750 SS from Italy.

The Britten, used as an icon on the show's posters, is of particular interest because it already stands as a classic of modern design and engineering. The machine's mystique stems in part from the tragic early death in 1995 of the motorcycle's creator, New Zealander John Britten. As David Moos comments, "In the Nineteenth Century on the frontier, we had the one rider on his horse going West. In the Twentieth Century, that rider is the man on his motorcycle."

If You Go:

"Art on Wheels: Selections from the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum" displays 25 streamlined motorcycles at the Birmingham Museum of Art, 200 Eighth Avenue North. Hours are Tuesday to Saturday 10 am to 5 pm; Sunday noon to 5 pm. Telephone 205/254-2565.

No trip to the area would be complete without a visit to the source, the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum itself, at 2721 5th Avenue South in Birmingham. Dedicated to the preservation of motorcycles from around the world, the Barber has over 325 on display at any given time, out of an inventory of around 600. Hours are Wednesday to Friday 9 am to 3 pm.

In the Midwest, visit the permanent collection at the Motorcycle Heritage Museum, at American Motorcyclist Association headquarters, 33 Collegeview Road, Westerville, Ohio, northeast of Columbus. Hours are Monday to Friday 9 am to 5 pm, Saturday 10 am to 4 pm, Sunday 1 to 5 pm. Every July, as a fund-raiser for the museum, the AMA hosts "Vintage Motorcycle Days" at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course featuring a show, auction, swap meet, and races. Telephone 614/891-2425 or 800/AMA-JOIN.