If you've read Robert Pirsig's book "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," you’ve spent time with his cycle, "the most famous forgotten motorcycle in American history," says Smithsonian ...

On View A Once-in-a-Lifetime Loan Brings Zen Buddhist Masterpieces to the U.S. The famed ink paintings by Muqi have never left Japan before. Now, they are headed to San Francisco.

"'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' is such an iconic book that anything associated with it has the same level of mystique," says Janice Ellis, the museum's senior book and paper conservator.