Full Throttle Americana

It's Lilac Sunday at the Shelburne Museum, and opening day for the Florence Petro Quilt Exhibit.  Despite the unseasonably cool weather and buffeting wind the queue for tickets stretches from the parking lot into the maw of the Round Barn.  They're not waiting in line to see the world's largest collection of duck decoys or the museum's internationally famous quilt collection.  Nor are they here they here to see the lilac and apple trees in full bloom: they're here to see motorcycles.

The Shelburne Museum, located on Route 7 just south of Burlington, Vermont, is internationally recognized for its folk art and collections of Americana.  It also features paintings by Claude Monet, Edouard Manet, Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt, Albert Bierstadt, Winslow Homer, Ogen Pleissner, Andrew Wyeth, and, well, big names in art.  Another collection that this museum is famous for is that of historic buildings, saved for future generations by the foresight of the founder, Electra Havemeyer Webb, a decade before the establishment of the National Registry of Historic Places.  While most buildings were carefully dismantled-each piece being numbered-at their original sites and painstakingly restored on the museum grounds, the core of Round Barn was lifted by helicopter and flown across the entire state. 

The Passumpsic Round Barn was built in 1901, the same year that Oscar Hedstrom and George Hendee manufactured the first Indian motorcycles.  In fact, a couple of Indian motorcycles are residing in the barn this summer -- as are dozens of other bikes.  This is "Full Throttle," the museum's first exhibition of motorcycle art.  Until October 25^th each of the three floors of the barn feature a theme: Wide Open & Wild--Racing machines; Classic Cool--Vintage Motorcycles; and Choppers: Art of the Custom.

The rough-planked main floor of the barn is a cavernous space steeped in shadow.  The vast exposed-frame walls are lined with gray-painted stages on which vintage motorcycles are illuminated by halogen lamps.  In sort of down-home Vermont fashion a disproportionate number of the motorcycles on display are registered vehicles and some, like the 1942 WLA-model Harley-Davidson, were ridden to the museum and put up on the stage "hot."  A museum employee's 1956 Velorex three-wheel cycle-car powered by a Jawa 350 engine is so pristine that it looks like a museum exhibit, but sports a current Vermont license plate.  A Suzuki Rotary, an Ariel Four, Triumphs, Indians, and a Triumph Bonneville with a left-hand sidecar are among those staged on the main floor.  Ironically, the "Jesse James Airstream," a much-hyped sidecar creation of West Coast Choppers that was spun by the company's PR department as having been created for the 75^th anniversary of the famous travel trailer company in 2008, is essentially ignored by builders, riders, and the general public even though it graces the entrance stage.

There is no doubt that the custom bikes are the stars of the show, despite being displayed on the second (mid) level of the barn.  Vermont builders are showcased alongside motorcycles made by famous bike builders like Arlen Ness, Dave Perewitz, and Matt Hoch.  Sisco Lellos of Green Mountain Performance brought "Under the Radar" and "Calgon," the former being a California-style chopper and the later a low, mean New Millennium-style machine.  Mike Palmer owns Venom Choppers and contributed "Road Kill," a raked out design that represents the archetype of the American custom.