NEWS RELEASE:
UA SCIENCE PROF REVS UP MOTORCYCLE EXHIBIT FOR THE GUGGENHEIM
For more information, Charles M. Falco, 520-621-6771
(Sent June 3, 1998)
Charles M. Falco, professor of optical sciences and condensed matter physics at The University of Arizona in Tucson, is a scientist whose passion for motorcycles has led him on what might be considered an unlikely journey to one of the world's most revered centers of art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City, where he is playing a key curatorial role in the upcoming exhibition, "The Art of the Motorcycle."
The exhibition, which opens June 26 for a three-month run, will feature approximately 100 motorcycles highlighting their more-than-100-year history. This is a first of its kind for the Guggenheim, and represents an area in which the artistic management felt the need to recruit some outside expertise. That's where Falco comes in.
"I have what is probably the world's largest private collection of motorcycle books," says Falco. His library contains what he estimates to be 80 percent of all English-language books on the subject. He also owns 15 motorcycles, himself. "Motorcycles and science have been my two lifelong interests," he says.
Falco's reputation and expertise led the Guggenheim to ask him to take a major role in the curatorial task of mounting the exhibit. The challenge was in looking at the motorcycle in a different way -- not as a mechanized mode of transportation but as "sculpture."
"The director of the Guggenheim saw the motorcycle as an icon of 20th century culture," says Falco, whose task it was to recommend which specific motorcycles should be included, and advise where examples of each could be located. "As a first step, I went through the relevant books in my collection, and came up with a list of all the machines I thought we should consider further."
The initial possibilities he came up with numbered somewhere between 300 and 400. Working with the Guggenheim's staff -- principally Ultan Guilfoyle, curatorial adviser to the director -- they slowly refined that list to the approximately 100 models that will go on display on the famous spiral ramp that Frank Lloyd Wright designed for the museum.
Falco received his doctorate in experimental condensed matter physics in 1974 from the University of California, Irvine. He has been a professor at the UA since 1982 and, in 1997, was named chair of condensed matter physics in recognition of his scientific accomplishments which have resulted in well over 200 research publications to date. He is also a professor in the surface science division of the UA's Arizona Research Laboratories, an interdisciplinary entity which has made possible new research and educational programs of high priority to the scientific community.
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