DRESDEN.- To strike up the season the Kunstgewerbemuseum (Museum of Decorative Arts) in Dresden is showing an exhibition in Schloss Pillnitz (Pillnitz Palace) on bicycle design and culture, titled “Self-propelled – or how the bicycle moves us”.

Two hundred years have passed since the invention of the hobby horse or running machine, yet the idea of being “self-propelled” by bicycle still has an enormously magnetic appeal, as curator Petra Schmidt demonstrates in her exhibition in the River Palace. She has picked out milestones in the history of bicycle development, including the historical velocipede, folding bikes, mountain bikes and racing bikes, also the required components and accessories – lights, seats, helmets, etc. – and highlights how technical innovations and aesthetic standards have influenced and shaped bicycle design.

But most of all the exhibition is about movement and mobility per se: in order to trace the development of the bicycle, the curator has arranged the exhibition into sections such as “The Discovery of Mechanical Movement”, “Movement in Sport”, “Society Gets Moving”, “Emotionally Moving” and “Modern Mobility”. Because, just as people move themselves by bicycle, the bicycle moves people to the same extent – and not least emotionally. As a mirror to its age, the show spotlights the bicycle in its significance for the workers’ and women’s movements, also for the hippies, who revolutionised cycle sports with their forerunners to the mountain bike. Even today, the autonomy enabled by the bicycle makes a political statement – we see this when the Critical Mass bikers pedal through the city to demonstrate for more rights in urban traffic.

Visitors can expect a modern presentation of all kinds of bicycles in the exhibition rooms. It includes a replica of the hobby horse, the so-called draisine, a penny-farthing, and culminates in highly specialised time trial bikes, developed for the Olympic Games in Atlanta. On top of this, there is the special feature of a rideable bicycle installation in the entrance area of the Wasserpalais (River Palace). These bikes (penny-farthing / recumbent / children’s / and racing bikes) are put there especially for visitors to try out. Likewise in the entrance area there is a timeline, starting around 1800 and converging in the future. It graphically interweaves images, facts and statistics of modern history with the history of the bicycle and casts up questions about our own behaviour in traffic and the topics of sustainability and the environment. Especially nowadays we see the bicycle experiencing a new boom, not only in sport or on the bike scene, but also in people’s awareness. The bicycle is therefore becoming an elemental part of a new lifestyle. The desire for ecological sustainability and health-oriented behaviour is reflected in the growing social presence of the bicycle.

To supplement the exhibition in Pillnitz, an extensive background programme is being arranged, including the “Pillnitz Summer Days” with guided tours, children’s workshops and street food sold from the vending bike – the cargo bike – a bicycle collecting action for refugees, two trips, and a symposium on “The Culture of Mobility”. Other dates and information are posted at www.der-eigene-antrieb.de

Further exhibitions of the 2016 season in the Kunstgewerbemuseum:
The exhibition “Friends + Design” starting on 9 July has as its thematic focus the friendship of seven designers – friends, yet simultaneously rivals on the art market. They are developing projects together especially for this exhibition. It is also an opportunity for us to introduce some internationally successful designers to Dresden for the first time (Tomás Alonso, Mathias Hahn, Richard Hutten, Philippe Malouin, Jerszy Seymour, Bethan Laura Wood, Michael Young).

Finally, in early September 2016, the Kunstgewerbemuseum will be working on an exhibition in process with the Studio Rygalik. The project “Creative Collisions” is being developed in situ together with creative people and is on show from 3 September onwards. Headed by Studio Rygalik, young designers and creative refugees are invited to work in partnership.