October 29, 2009
Brooklyn Museum opens rock n' roll picture show
Filled with pop images of the Rolling Stones, Elvis, U2, Blondie, Bob Dylan, Grace Jones, Run DMC and Madonna the Brooklyn Museum on Friday will open “Who Shot Rock & Roll,” a show it’s billing as the first major museum exhibition devoted solely to rock photographers.
 “This is Brooklyn Museum’s version of a limited-edition Double LP with gatefolds signed by the artists,” said Matthew Yokobosky, the chief designer at Brooklyn Museum, who edited and designed the exhibition.
“Over 50 percent are original prints,” he told NewYorkology on Thursday during a media preview. That means the images tend to be smaller than a typical museum photographic exhibition since the originals were printed for magazines, newspapers and album covers, Yokobosky said. “It was important to get the vintage prints.”
But if you like your rock big and loud, this may not be your show. It’s possibly more pleasing to the connoisseur, who relishes the vintage, the need to lean in close to the original, sometimes in an is-that-David-Bowie-naked kind of way.
The exhibition features 175 pictures and videos by 105 photographers, including Richard Avedon, Anton Corbijn, Diane Arbus, Annie Leibovitz, David LaChapelle, Bob Gruen, Dennis Hopper and Linda McCartney.
It show starts with William “Red” Robertson’s photo of Elvis Presley dancing on stage, which was cropped at the waist and used as his first album cover, and includes Avedon’s 1967 portraits of the youthful Beatles, a nearly clean-shaven, serious Chuck Berry (image No. 22) without guitar by Jean-Marie Perier and David LaChapelle’s “Lil Kim: F- The Police.”
One section of the exhibition promises “Behind the Scenes” pictures that finally are not about celebrity or image. But without skepticism, that selection includes Amy Winehouse inviting a photographer into her wedding day bed as she slips her fingers down her shorts. Where might you have seen that intimate moment before? In a cover story of Rolling Stone.
The gift shop is packed with books, T-shirts and coffee mugs, along with some music-inspired merch including leather-and-spike bracelets, a solar-powered disco ball, Woodstock paper dolls, and keyrings in the shape of a 45-record adapter.
The show’s audio guide can be downloaded for free from the museum’s website. “Who Shot Rock & Roll” will be on view in Brooklyn through Jan. 31.
Blondie plays the members’ preview tonight.
Picture credits: Max Vadukul, Amy Winehouse, May 18, 2007, 24 × 36 in. (61 × 91.4 cm)
Amy Winehouse, 2007 © Max Vadukul.
Michael Putland, Mick Jagger, taken 1982; printed 1990s, Gelatin silver print
Sheet: 12 × 10 in. (30.5 × 25.4.)
Brooklyn Museum gallery by Amy Langfield/NewYorkology.
Ian Dickson, The Ramones, 1977, Silver gelatin print, 16 × 20 in. (40.6 × 50.8 cm)
Ian Dickson/www.late20thcenturyboy.com
October 29, 2009 2:03 PM in Museums, Out of Manhattan, Sightsology
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