The Ubiquitous Bicycle Stars in a New Exhibition at The Church

Earlier this year, while visiting New Bremen, Ohio, artist Eric Fischl was given a tour of the Bicycle Museum of America.

“This collection, in one of the many heartlands of America, is a treasure of history told through the invention and development of the bicycle,” Fischl, North Haven resident and co-founder of The Church explained. “For me, it was an extraordinary introduction into a vehicle that has touched and impacted all our lives, our everyday lives. So ubiquitous and commonplace, it is easy to overlook how central this brilliant mode of travel and play has been to us for over 200 years.”

This fall, as a part of “RE:CYCLE,” an on-going series of exhibitions exploring material culture, The Church announced its show titled, “The Ubiquitous Bike.” The exhibition presents rare and atypical examples of bicycle design alongside a selection of fine art photography and video. The opening reception for the show will be Saturday, October 7, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. The show runs from October 8 to December 17, giving people plenty of time to ride their bikes (or drive their cars) over to The Church in Sag Harbor to check out the two-wheeled rides.

The 20 one-of-a-kind bicycles on display come from the collection of the Bicycle Museum of America (BMA) and were chosen by Fischl and the BMA’s coordinator Ryan Long. Dating from 1891 to 2017, these bikes highlight innovative ideas about the design of the bicycle in addition to showcasing how the materials and engineering of bicycles have changed over time to reflect their different uses.

Through its collection and scholarship, the Bicycle Museum offers a unique opportunity to preserve not only a litany of historic bicycles but the history behind them and the manufacturers that created them. Bikes include a rare circa 1898 Stoddard Cygnet, 1936 Elgin Skylark, 1960 Bowden Spacelander, and 2017 Handcrafted Wooden Cycle by Warren J. Von Botbyl among many other examples. Janet and Jim Dicke, founders of the Bicycle Museum of America, also helped bring this exhibition to fruition.

Sara Cochran, The Church’s chief curator, is overseeing all components of the larger exhibition and will contribute a selection of contemporary video works that incorporate the bicycle in varied and poignant ways, reflecting the reliance on and love for the two wheels.

“We thought it would be interesting to bring these bicycles to the East End of Long Island given the strong cycling community,” Cochran said, adding that the show traces human interactions with bicycles as well as innovation and engineering. Visitors will be able to ride a fixed bicycle, the Penny Farthing from the 1870s, commonly known as the “high wheel” because of its large wheel in front. In addition, there is a bike from the 1800s that was modified to ride in the snow and ice. Another bicycle was designed in the late 19th century to have a machine gun attached and used in South Africa during warring times.

“The bicycle is integral to and emblematic of the mechanics of individual travel, it is a continuum of advanced industrial design that has always pushed forward an honest and sincere belief in an equally shared positive future,” Fischl said. “It occurred to me how wonderful it would be to bring home to Sag Harbor and share some of the gob-smacked pleasure I experienced seeing the history and creative imagination manifested in this extraordinary machine.”

The Bicycle Museum of America has nearly 150 bicycles on display in its galleries and 800 in its collection. Its guided and self-guided tours allow visitors to explore the history of the bicycle and how it helped shape the American landscape through innovation and design. The museum’s mission is to provide an understanding through interpretation, social relevance and the dissemination of information on bicycles and cycling on a global and historical platform.

These rare and eclectic bicycles will be complemented by an exhibition of photography co-curated by Mark Lubell, the former executive director of the International Center of Photography and former director of Magnum Photos, and Jennifer Tripp, independent curator and former director of print sales for Magnum Photos.

When Tripp was first approached with the idea of curating a photography show on bicycles as part of The Church’s fall exhibition, her wheels began turning, she said, pun intended.

“I started my research in a place that instantly brought to mind several iconic images of bicycles — Magnum Photos,” said Tripp. “I thoroughly enjoyed the deep dive back into Magnum’s archive, a collection I had previously spent years combing through. It was a wonderful sense of familiarity as I recalled [Elliott] Erwitt’s young boy with baguettes on the back of a bicycle, [Henri] Cartier-Bresson’s bicycle whizzing past a staircase, and [Robert] Capa’s crowd watching the Tour de France with its frame conspicuously absent of any actual bikes. This feeling was coupled with discovery, as I unearthed many wonderful images of bicycles that I had never previously seen.”

Tripp reached out to photographers, estates, collectors and gallerists with whom she’d worked throughout the years to have them explore their archives in search of bicycle imagery. A true highlight, she said, was Susan Meiselas’ s negative from 1970s New York that had never been printed or scanned.

“To imagine that no one has seen this captivating portrait before now is such a thrill,” Tripp explained of the image, adding that the young gentleman captured in it is the epitome of style. Between his perfectly tailored three-piece suit and his custom tricked-out bike, the image encapsulates the era.

Looking at the work of modern and contemporary masters of the medium, from Elliott Erwitt and Evelyn Hofer to Susan Meiselas, the curators have culled a selection of images from around the globe highlighting the ubiquitous nature of the bicycle. The photographs reflect the bicycle’s accessibility and practicality, its beauty and gift of freedom, and its enduring presence in almost all cultures.

In addition to the photographs and bicycles on view in the show, Sagaponack artist Steve Miller is lending a work by the Brazilian artist Jarbas Lopes from his Cicloviaéreabike series — an ongoing project in which he encases bicycles in intricately woven material. Otherworldly, but still functional, these bikes are destined to be used on Lopes’s ciclovia, a series of elevated urban bike paths that have not yet been built.

Photographers featured in the exhibition are: Dawoud Bey, A. Aubrey Bodine, Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Philippe Cheng, Elaine Constantine, William Eggelston, Elliott Erwitt, Loenard Freed, Burt Glinn, Jim Goldberg, Thomas Hoepker, Evelyn Hofer, Seydou Keïta, Don Lenzer, Vivian Maier, Costa Manos, Steve McCurry, Susan Meiselas, Inge Morath, Lindsay Morris, Rodney Smith, Ron Terner, Alex Webb and Bruce Weber. Visual art in the exhibition is by Bas Jan Ader, Bari Kumar and Studio Drift.

“RE:CYCLE — The Ubiquitous Bike” opens with a reception on Saturday, October 7, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. and remains on view through December 31 (bikes on view through December 17). The Church will sponsor programs in conjunction with the exhibition, including a bike ride excursion to Shelter Island on Saturday, October 21, at 10 a.m. led by cyclists Jerry Brown and Lois Peltz of the East Hampton Trails Preservation Society, followed on Friday, December 1, at 6 p.m., by a Knowledge Friday talk with Jennifer Tripp and Mark Lubell, co-curators of the photography portion of the exhibition.

For more information on all programming, visit thechurchsagharbor.org. The Church is at 48 Madison Street, Sag Harbor.