Overview

The Harley-Davidson Museum is an American museum located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin celebrating the more than 100-year history of Harley-Davidson motorcycles. The 130,000 square foot (12,077.3952 m2) three-building complex on 20 acres (8.0937128448 ha) along the Menomonee River bank contains more than 450 Harley-Davidson motorcycles and hundreds of thousands of artifacts from the Harley-Davidson Motor Company’s 120-year history.
The museum opened to the public on July 12, 2008, on a 20-acre (8.0937128448 ha) site in the Menomonee Valley. The museum’s galleries permanent exhibitions, spread throughout two floors, in addition to temporary exhibits and the motor company’s archives. The complex also includes a restaurant, café, retail shop, and special event spaces. Also on display are historic Harley-Davidson items that tell the company’s story and history, such as photographs, posters, advertisements, clothes, trophies, video footage of vintage and contemporary motorcycling, and interactive exhibits, including 10 motorcycles that visitors can sit on.
Along the east side of the upstairs galleries, a series of interconnected galleries exhibit the Harley-Davidson’s chronological history. The museum’s second floor galleries begin with the Engine Room. A Knucklehead engine is displayed disassembled into several pieces. The Engine Room also features several interactive touch screen elements that show how Harley motors, including Panhead and Shovelhead motors work. The Clubs and Competition gallery includes displays and information about Harley-Davidson’s racing history. The gallery includes a section of a replica wooden board track, suspended in the air at a 45-degree incline. The museum’s upper floor exhibits also include the Gas Tank Gallery, formerly part of the Harley-Davidson 100th Anniversary Open Road Tour. The exhibit displays 100 of Harley-Davidson’s most memorable tank graphics, spanning 70 years, selected by the company’s styling department and reproduced on “Fat Bob” tanks. The Custom Culture gallery covers Harley-Davidson’s impact on American and global culture. The centerpiece of the Custom Culture Gallery is “King Kong”, a 13-foot (3.9624 m) long, two-engine Harley-Davidson motorcycle customized by Felix Predko. The exhibit also features exact replicas of the customized Harley-Davidson bikes ridden by Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper in the 1969 American movie, “Easy Rider”, including Fonda’s “Captain America” chopper and Hopper’s “Billy Bike”. Since 1915, the company’s founders decided to pull one bike from the production line to be preserved in an archive.