EXHIBITION ABSTRACT

Adventure (ADV) and overland motoring are as old as the first motorized wheels and as modern as the future of manned space travel. In the pioneering era of the late 19th century, every journey was an adventure, and long-distance overland tours were worthy of news reports. Tales of perilous travel to far-off places are cultural touchstones and among the oldest recorded literature, from Homer’s 3,000-year-old Odyssey to Xuanzang’s account of his Silk Road overland trip to India in 626. We dream of adventure travel, and fictional accounts in the late 1800s by Jules Verne and H.G. Wells were perfectly timed to inspire mechanized journeys on Earth and inspire off-world travel to the Moon, Mars, and beyond, a century later. ADV:Overland documents the motorized legacy of our long fascination with overland adventures, as a first-ever comprehensive exhibition of round-the-world and long-distance adventure motorcycles and related vehicles.