Someone on another site asked me why the exhibition is in Brisbane. Although no one here asked that question, I'll repeat my answer anyway. Giving the full background would require quite a long essay, so I'll try to be as short as possible while still being accurate.
'The Art of the Motorcycle' that Ultan Guilfoyle and I (Charles Falco) curated for the Guggenheim twenty years earlier set an all-time attendance record for them, and in doing so became by far the most heavily-attended design exhibition of all time, as well as the fifth most heavily attended museum exhibition of any kind. As an aside, although design (a beautiful pen, or table, or motorcycle) and art (a Rodan sculpture or Monet painting) have features in common, there is a difference.
Ultan and I are both connected to the art world beyond having curated that exhibition.[*] For example, Ultan is former Director of the Filmmaking Department of the Guggenheim, and in his subsequent career as an independent filmmaker has made a number of documentaries about art museums, artists, and architects. I've had a twenty-year collaboration with the artist David Hockney, who is one of the world's most famous living artists,[**] and as a result I've given
public lectures at the Hermitage, Uffizi, Metropolitan, etc., including the National Gallery of Art in Canberra.
[*] We're also life-long motorcyclists. Ultan rode trials in his youth in Ireland, rebuilt a Norton Commando in his office at the Guggenheim while we were working on 'The Art of the Motorcycle', and is currently assembling a Gold Star Catalina from ~2000 separate parts. I got a Honda 50 when I was 15, have never been without at least one motorcycle since then, and completely rebuilt the 1928 Ariel myself that I rode in the 2018 Cannonball.
[**]In the first episode of the new HBO series 'The Undoing', a scene with Nicole Kidman uses the fact a particular couple owns
two Hockney paintings to establish how cultured and spectacularly wealthy they are.
QAGOMA is led by a Director, Chris Saines, who is quite visionary. When he approached us nearly three years ago about doing an exhibition of motorcycle design, both of us already knew it was one of Australia's most significant art museums, and we subsequently learned it has a large fraction of its visitors each year from overseas as well as from across Australia. Although our immediate reaction was neither of us was interested in doing what would be simply an update of 'The Art of the Motorcycle', Chris made clear from the start that he wasn't interested in us doing that, either. Twenty years ago it was revolutionary enough to fill a major art museum with motorcycles, so our approach at that time had to be conservative. Basically, it was ~100 motorcycles in simple chronological order. Today there isn't the same constraint, so our approach could be quite different. And, it is.
Anyway, that's a heavily-condensed overview of how the exhibition came into being in the first place, and why it's in Brisbane. That said, from the start we've intended for it to tour after its run in Brisbane. However, discussions with other locations are on hold until the world gets back to normal.
Since most people reading this won't be able to see it in Brisbane even if Queensland opens its borders soon,
the 320-page catalog(ue) we wrote for the exhibition is a worthwhile substitute. It's a heavily-illustrated stand-alone book that looks at the past, present, and future of motorcycles and motorcycle design. For what it's worth, the last I looked, Amazon was taking pre-orders for pre-Christmas delivery at significantly less than it will retail for after publication.