Courtesy of the Harley-Davidson Museum
The road was long for the crew-cut boy who raced motorcycles and later became the master forger of American iron. In the story told by the exhibition “Willie G. Davidson: Artist, Designer, Leader, Legend,” his destiny was not foreordained. The exhibit at the Harley-Davidson Museum Garage shows a talented motorcycle-loving artist weaned on the business cofounded by his grandfather but under no obligation to continue the legacy. After studying art and working for Milwaukee industrial designer Brooks Stevens, Davidson became Harley’s first design director in 1963. He was already 30 years old.
“Willie G. Davidson” collects artifacts from his surprisingly diverse career as an artist and designer along with personal effects and photographs chronicling his life. Also documented is the growth of his namesake company from stalwart Milwaukee industry through a period of lost identity before reemerging as an enterprise that embodied not only the lifestyle associated with motorcycles but was emblematic of American mythology. In the 20th century, the cowboy traded his steed for a chopper.
Before 1963, the motor company’s engineering department designed the Harleys that Davidson had admired in his youth, including the shiny black-and-chrome 1948 Model S he owned as a teenager (displayed in the exhibit). Although they were already beautiful machines, Davidson was determined to elevate the product. Under his long reign, Harleys would be practical, durable and cut a strong, distinct image on the road. One thing the exhibit doesn’t do is remind us that Harley-Davidson wasn’t the only game in America for a long time. Marlon Brando did not ride a Harley in The Wild One. Merged with the recreational vehicle manufacturer AMF from 1969-1980, Harley-Davidson’s market share shrank in the face of Kawasaki and other well-marketed foreign invaders. But in 1981, Davidson joined the effort that bought back the company and rebranded the Harley-Davidson motorcycle as a pure product of the American imagination in a pantheon along with Levi Strauss, Smith & Wesson and John B. Stetson.
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The photographs of Davidson mirror the evolution of his company’s image. In 1963, with his horn rims, white shirt and conservative suit and tie, Davidson could have been a corporate executive from any Rock Hudson-Tony Randall movie of the era. In the ’70s his hair was longer, his sideburns bushier and he favored paisley shirts with long pointy collars. With the repurchasing and rebranding of Harley in the ’80s, the white-bearded, leather-clad Davidson became as integral to the brand as the corporate logo—which he had designed.
The motorcycles will be the exhibit’s biggest draw, and there are several on display, including a 1971 FX Super Glide, which displays Davidson’s keen awareness of customized bikes and his willingness to incorporate street-level influences into his manufacturing strategy; a 1972 Café Racer prototype with ceramic exhaust pipes; and a 1988 Fat Boy prototype. The accompanying memorabilia will be priceless for Harley enthusiasts, including a paper bag on which Davidson sketched out plans for the FX3. By all accounts, Davidson was always doodling, sketching and jotting down ideas. Many of them eventually rolled off the assembly line on Juneau Avenue or ended up on clothing racks with the proliferation of Harley merchandise.
Context beyond Davidson’s love for motorcycles can be glimpsed in his watercolors included in the exhibit, which run from abstractions to florals and plein air studies of Door County. Also included are artifacts from Davidson’s personal collection of Native American and American folk art. The geometry of those objects may have influenced some of his own designs. The larger sense of creativity in everyday objects inspired his sensibility as an industrial designer as well as his eagerness to attach images of a bygone America to the industrial-age products of Harley-Davidson.
Through Sept. 7 at the Harley-Davidson Garage, 400 W. Canal St. For more information, visit h-dmuseum.com.
