Motorcycling: For The Executive Rider - A Connoisseur's Collection
May 15, 2003
Guy Webster’s red wooden barn, ringed with weeds and scattered gardening tools, has become a pilgrimage destination for motorcycle cognoscenti. Several years ago, Webster received a surprise visit from one of these connoisseurs, the daughter of MV Agusta founder Count Domenico Agusta. The countess, having heard fables of an incomparable Italian motorcycle collection in Southern California, traveled from Italy to Webster’s home in Ojai to see if there was any truth to these tales. After an exchange of pleasantries, Webster escorted her from his house, situated in a secluded area adjacent to an orange grove, down a short path to the barn. He then swung open the door and flipped on the lights, revealing dozens of sparkling small-displacement Italian motorcycles, including several machines that her late father had designed and built. She stepped inside for a better view, and standing under a sign that reads, “Parking for Italians only/All others will be towed,” the countess wept.; function voidFunc() { } voidFunc(); "Webster's motorcycle collection in Southern California")
Emotions often run unchecked in the presence of Webster’s collection. Every other weekend from October through May, as many as 300 visitors from California and beyond flock to Webster’s barn to gawk, sigh, and shed an occasional tear over his 75-machine stable of Italian motorcycles built from 1950 to 1980. “When one of the top people in Italy who buys and restores these bikes looked at my collection, he said it’s the finest collection of Italian bikes in the world,” says the 63-year-old Webster. “They’re all correct and they’re
all there.” (Click image to enlarge)
The curators of the Guggenheim’s The Art of the Motorcycle exhibit were sufficiently impressed with the collection to include five of Webster’s bikes in the show, which has been drawing record crowds to the museums since it opened at the Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain, in 1998. “His approach is that of a connoisseur,” says Charles
Falco, cocurator of The Art of the Motorcycle. “If you’re the Metropolitan Museum in New York, you can have an incredibly broad collection of all periods and art. If you’re a smaller museum, you can try and do the same thing, but then you’re broadly collecting stuff of not good quality. A good curator of a smaller museum will focus on a smaller aspect to be the best in the world. I sensed that in Guy’s collection.”
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