CYCLING IN THE CITY.

• Position: MUSEUMS TODAY - "Cycling in the City: A 200-Year History" exhibition

THE EXHIBITION, "Cycling in the City: A 200-Year History," on view through Oct. 6 at the Museum of the City of New York, traces how the bicycle transformed urban transportation and leisure and explores the extraordinary diversity of cycling cultures, past and present. The exhibit reveals the complex, creative, and often-contentious relationship between the city and the bicycle, while underscoring the importance of cycling as metropolises confront climate change, energy scarcity, and population growth in the years to come.

The exhibition comprises more than 150 objects, including 14 bicycles--spanning 1869 through today and presented on a stepped platform evocative of a historic velodrome, or cycle racing track--photographs, prints, and cycling apparel, as well as ephemera such as posters, magazines, brochures, and badges. The exhibition also features vintage and contemporary films projected on a large screen, a newly commissioned film of interviews with cycling advocates, and three indoor stationary bicycles that will enable visitors to experience virtual cycling landscapes via an online-based video game.

"The recent renaissance of cycling, as well as the 200-year anniversary of the arrival of the first bicycle in New York City in 1819, makes this an opportune time to ... foster discussion about the bicycle's role in the metropolis--past, present, and future," says Whitney W. Donhauser, director and president of MCNY.

"Everything is bicycle"--that is how author Stephen Crane in 1896 described a cycle-crazed New York. The same could be said today. In recent years, bicycles have taken a major spot alongside motor vehicles and pedestrians in a reconfigured landscape of urban mobility. The statistics are staggering: according to the Department of Transportation, more than 800,000 New Yorkers ride a bike regularly and 460,000 cycling trips are taken every day, triple the number 15 years ago--and there are more than 100 miles of protected bike lanes, making New York one of Bicycling magazine's top 10 cycling cities in the country.

This success may come as a surprise since New York has had a complicated love-hate relationship with the bicycle ever since the first velocipede appeared on the streets of the city in 1819. Generations have associated cycling in the city with danger--cyclists fear cars and pedestrians feel threatened by both. Although pedaling through the city's crowded streets still comes with risks, cycling has become safer as the...