Actress Lauren Hutton attended the motorcycle exhibition

The motorcycle exhibition attracted stars including Dennis Hopper, Jeremy Irons and Lauren Hutton.

All are members of the celebrity-filled Guggenheim Motorcycle Club.

Hutton was critically injured last year on the club's last motorcycle ride in Nevada.

The exhibition, installed by architect Frank Gehry explores the motorcycle as both a cultural icon and design achievement.

Accompanying the exhibition will be a 60ft media wall showing continuous silent footage of scenes from famous motorcycle movies and races.

The motorbike exhibition opened at the New York museum

"As the motorcycle embodies so many of the themes of our age - technology, speed, rebellion, transformation - it serves as the perfect vehicle, if you will, for an exploration of the 20th Century," Thomas Krens, director of New York's Solomon R Guggenheim Foundation, said.

The display has gone on show before at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, where it opened in 1998, as well as Chicago and Bilbao, Spain.

At the Hermitage, nicknamed the Jewel Box 45, masterpieces will be shown from Russia's State Hermitage Museum and various Guggenheim museums.

It is the first collaboration between the two museums.

The exhibition features major works of impressionist art, followed by post-impressionism and early modernism, said Lisa Dennison, the museum's chief curator.

Venetian Chairman Sheldon Adelson hoped that 5,000 people a day will visit the museums.