Harley Davidson Museum

Museum fun continues to appeal to thousands of people today, becoming a major tourism attraction all over the world. Consequently, fun museums have sprouted up in the last three decades to feature just about anything conceived of man or even natural phenomena that have a mystic value. Motorcycles too, in this very decade have celebrated the inauguration of their museum. The Harley Davidson Museum is the name of an American motorcycle museum located at the junction of Canal Street and Sixth Street, downtown Milwaukee, in Wisconsin.

The Harley Davidson Museum measures a whooping 130,000-square-foot space of a three-storey building complex on a 20-acre piece of land. In here, over 450 specimens of the Harley-Davidson motorcycles have been amassed and displayed artistically. These are then complemented by thousands and thousands of keepsake artifacts from the Harley-Davidson Motor Company, collected during the 106-year reign as a global motorcycle legend. Museum fun is so addictive that if you are into museums, you can trot the globe to every museum available and displaying whatever form of treasures. The Harley Davidson Museum today attracts over 300,000 guests annually, some being lovers of the motorcycles while other are just in love with fun museums.

The museum was designed over an eight year duration by the Pentagram architects firm associates, James Biber and Michael Zweck-Bonner. It took two years to build the museum, after Harley Davidson signed out $75 million on 1^st June 2006 for the complex engineers to resume construction. Instead of using a golden shovel as is the tradition in inaugural ceremonies, Scott Parker, the famous Harley Davidson dirt-track motorcycle racer, flagged off the construction with a burnout of the Harley-Davidson XL883R Sportster. Two years later, the Harley Davidson Museum was inaugurated on 12^th July 2008, in a groundbreaking ceremony.

The Harley Davidson Museum is located exactly where the Milwaukee Department of Public Works, the Lakeshore Sand Company and the Morton Salt Company were located. It includes a parking lot for 500 cars and 1,000 motorbikes alongside a 17-foot-tall steel cast sign of Harley-Davidson motor company.

Besides the building, the museum has perfected the display art of museums like no other modern museum. The Harley-Davidson Motor Company started a corporate archive in 1915, where every bike that hit the production line has been preserved and archived to date. These are part of the items on display in the museum. Two floors in the museum’s galleries have been dedicated to permanent exhibitions and some fantastic temporary exhibits besides the motor company’s archives. The Harley Davidson Museum also includes a modern restaurant, a cafe, a retail shop and halls for special events, to spice up the museum fun.

Two floors in the museum’s galleries have been dedicated to permanent exhibitions and some fantastic temporary exhibits besides the motor company’s archives. The items on display in the museum tell the historic advances of Harley-Davidson. These include posters, photographs, advertisements, trophies, clothes and video footage of both the vintage and the contemporary motorcycling experience. You can amplify your fun at Harley Davidson Museum by taking part in the interactive exhibits or sitting on the 10 motorcycles available for visitors mock testing.

Another great display tactic has been used in the museum’s top floor to showcase a motorcycles procession, by placing it down the main hall’s centre and running the entire building’s length. This makes a mockery of the traditional wall positioning of museum items all over the world. On either side, interconnected galleries masterfully exhibit the Harley-Davidson history chronologically, starting from its original 10×15-foot wooden structure to the current specimen of the leading U.S. motorcycle manufacturer. The centerpiece is clearly marked out as ‘number one’, featuring a glass encasing of the oldest Harley Davidson cycle in existence. This is clearly embossed on a background of text, outlining the history of the motor company since it was founded.

The museum also includes an engine room where a knucklehead engine has been disassembled and displayed. This room has interactive touch screens that show how the engines work. There also clubs and a competition gallery in the museum that avails information and displays of the entire Harley Davidson racing history, with most replica designs suspended at 45-degree angles in the air. Other sections in the museum include the tank gallery, the Easy-Rider replica designs gallery and the corporate archives and collections.

How the items are arranged, how they are labeled and how they have been encased is an art that every museum in the world can emulate. Clearly, the Harley Davidson Museum has perfected the art of museum design. This is something you should also witness personally, whether or not you are into motorcycles.