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20/09/2006

Must-see Dylan programme at New York’s Morgan Museum

New York’s Morgan Library & Museum, at 225 Madison Avenue, is set to unveil an unmissable Bob Dylan season, consisting of a must-see exhibition, and exciting complementary lecture and film programmes.

My, my, my: how I wish I lived in NYC, or in the Tri-State area!

Here’s The Morgan’s press briefing on the Exhibition; keep watching The Dylan Daily for details of the Lectures and Films.


Gerry Smith






THE MORGAN LIBRARY & MUSEUM PRESENTS BOB DYLAN’S AMERICAN JOURNEY, 1956–1966

Exhibition Chronicles Dylan’s Formative Early Career and Includes Work from the Morgan’s Collection of Dylan Holdings

Bob Dylan’s American Journey, 1956–1966, the first comprehensive exhibition devoted to Bob Dylan’s early career, is on view at The Morgan Library & Museum from September 29, 2006, through January 6, 2007.

The exhibition examines the critical ten-year period that coincides with Dylan’s transformation from folk troubadour to rock innovator during a momentous, turbulent period of American history. Bob Dylan’s American Journey, 1956–1966, is organized by Experience Music Project, Seattle, Washington.

The exhibition includes original typed and handwritten lyrics, rarely seen photographs, concert and television footage, posters and handbills of Dylan’s early performances in New York, and other
artifacts. Several Dylan manuscripts and typescripts of lyrics from a selection of more than ninety songs given to The Morgan Library & Museum in the late 1990s by collector George Hecksher will also be
on view. These include such well-known songs as “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “It’s Alright, Ma,” “Masters of War,” “Ballad in Plain D,” and “Gates of Eden.”

“Few would argue that Bob Dylan is a gifted songwriter whose work has had an important social and cultural impact in America and abroad,” said Charles E. Pierce, Jr., Director of The Morgan Library
& Museum.

“It has been said many times that his songs came to embody an entire generation. This exhibition examines his formative years, especially in New York, as he established his career and wrote some of his most critically acclaimed and best-known songs.”

According to Robert Parks, who is the Robert H. Taylor Curator at The Morgan Library & Museum and is overseeing the exhibition’s installation, throughout Dylan’s career many have regarded his lyrics as poetry.

Most recently, the 2006 edition of The Oxford Book of American Poetry included Dylan’s “Desolation Row” from his 1965 album Highway 61 Revisited. In explaining its inclusion, David Lehman, poet and editor of the edition, observed that “the lyrics in three of his record albums from the mid-1960s—Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde—particularly reward close analysis of the sort given to demanding examples of modern poetry.”

Bob Dylan’s American Journey is curated by Jasen Emmons of Experience Music Project and traces Dylan’s personal and artistic development, beginning in postwar Hibbing, Minnesota, the industrial town where Robert Zimmerman (b. 1941) grew up as a store owner’s son inspired by early rock and roll.

The exhibition follows Dylan to his debut on the national stage of the Greenwich Village folk scene—one of history’s most fascinating intersections of art, politics, and lifestyle—through to his massive fame as one of the first true rock stars and the man who “electrified” contemporary songwriting.

This ten-year span encompasses the release of some of Dylan’s seminal albums, including The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde.

The retrospective showcases a blend of more than one hundred fifty objects. In addition to those from The Morgan Library & Museum, there are items from the permanent collection of Experience Museum Project, the Bob Dylan Archives, the Smithsonian Museum of American History, the Civil Rights Museum, and private collections.

Few figures in contemporary American popular music have reached the status of Bob Dylan. His is a distinctly American body of work that follows in the footsteps of his early musical hero, folksinger Woody
Guthrie, with links to America’s blues tradition, southern work songs, Anglo-American ballads, and early rock and roll.

The exhibition includes viewing stations with excerpts from several live Dylan performances and listening stations that allow visitors to hear various tracks from Dylan songs from the period in which he evolved from a little known folksinger to a rock-and-roll icon. These stations also include conversations with other musicians of the day relating to Dylan and the changing times.


General Information
The Morgan Library & Museum
225 Madison Avenue, at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016-3405
212.685.0008
www.themorgan.org

Hours
Tuesday–Thursday, 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.; extended Friday hours, 10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; closed Mondays, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day.

Admission
$12 for adults; $8 for students, seniors (65 and over) and children (under 16); free to Members and children 12 and under accompanied by an adult. Admission is free on Fridays from 7 to 9 p.m. Admission to the McKim rooms is without charge during the following times: Tuesday, 3 to 5 p.m.; Friday, 7 to 9 p.m.; Sunday, 4 to 6 p.m. Admission is not required to visit the Morgan Shop.

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