‘Art & Engineering’ Meet at Harley-Davidson Museum

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Harley-Davidson motorcycles have often featured striking designs in recent decades. This is not a new development. If you imagine that Messrs. Harley and Davidson, tinkering in the tool shed in 1903, were concerned only with making those early bikes run, you’d be wrong. 

So says Ann Sinfield, curator at the Harley-Davidson Museum, and she has mounted an exhibition to prove her point. “Creating a Legend: Art & Engineering at Harley-Davidson” starts with the Model 6 Single (1910), a piece of machinery built to endure the era’s rugged roadway and yet … She points to excerpts on display from that year’s Harley-Davidson catalog, describing the bike in visual language—the continuous loop of the Model 6 frame and how the tool kit fits into the overall construction. “It was talking not only about engineering improvements but emphasizes the design elements,” Sinfield says.

The inspiration for “Creating a Legend” came with the donation to the museum of a batch of wildlife sketches, including drawings of ducks in flight, by the motor company’s cofounder, William S. Harley. Turns out he was a member of the Men’s Sketch Club of Milwaukee. “He had an engineering degree from the University of Wisconsin and had many patents, and here he is, doing sketches and belonging to an artists’ club,” Sinfield continues. “We wanted to explore that duality. Design has been part of Harley-Davidson’s DNA since the beginning.”

And yet, Harley-Davidson had no design department until 1963. “Creating a Legend” leaps from 1910 to 1949, when Milwaukee’s acclaimed commercial designer Brook Stevens took charge of the FL Hydra Glide. The example on display is a gleaming, beautiful machine, endowed with the generously proportioned confidence of a triumphal America, the only industrial power left standing after World War II. The Hydra Glide bears some resemblance to another Stevens’ motor vehicle design, for Studebaker.

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One of Stevens’ acolytes happened to be Willie G. Davidson, who returned to the family motorcycle business in 1963 as Harley-Davidson’s first design director. He became responsible for the look of everything Harley, letterhead and T-shirts as well as the company’s signature two-wheeled products. The eclectic design of the 1971 FX Super Glide resulted from Davidson’s cross-country rides, his conversations with riders and his interest in custom design, especially the California chopper subculture. Davidson is also a painter and some of his watercolors are parked near the Super Glide.

“Creating a Legend” also gets behind the scenes, displaying the clay scale models that remain essential to the design process. “The designers need to see the physicality of their ideas and respond to it,” Sinfield explains. “The team will gather around a clay model and shape it as they talk.” Virtual reality and software are being used, but after all, Harley-Davidson’s product epitomizes the rejection of the virtual in favor of real experience. Pen and paper, and clay sculptor’s tools, remain essential. 

Collaboration is at the heart of Harley-Davidson’s process. “A lot of ideas are exchanged before final decisions are made,” Sinfield says. The marketing team, the engineering and manufacturing teams as well as the designers work in an ongoing back and forth to produce the final product with many stages on the way before the assembly line begins to roll. On display is a realistic mockup of the 2021 Sportster S, a foam and plastic prototype of the real deal. 

“Creating a Legend” will be on display through spring 2027.