Lou Reed: Caught Between the Twisted Stars, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center Presents The First Large Exhibition Of The Rock N Roll Animal June 9, 2022–March 4, 2023
Old rockers become more and more respectable (I mean, if they don’t get cancelled) as they age and even die. It is hard to remember that Looooou was a heroine addicted avatar of gay otherness: while gay New York was protesting and marching for change, Lou was getting backstreet blowjobs from he was a she-ers. He was that, he was that danger.
Now he has his archives up for everyone to see.
Greatest artist will be greatest artists, even Jean Genet (surely an ancestor of Lou) got out of prison and became respected by the time Genet had reached his 70s. As for Lou, at the very latest the album where the upcoming archives exhibition took its name from found Lou playing Broadway.
So… here:
“The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center will mount Lou Reed: Caught Between the Twisted Stars, the first large-scale exhibition from Reed’s archive. The exhibition will display the life and work of the icon whose profound influence—musically, visually, and culturally—still affects a range of artists and writers today.
Lou Reed: Caught Between the Twisted Stars, taken from a lyric from “Romeo Had Juliette” from Reed’s solo album, New York, will present previously unseen and unheard work of a prolific and uncompromising artist—songwriter, musician, performer, poet, photographer, and tai chi practitioner. The story is told through the voices, images, and music of Reed’s music projects; through his performances and theatre works; the articles, books, and poems that he authored; his own photography; and his personal tai chi studies.
The show will pay tribute to the many friends and collaborators whom he influenced and who, in turn, shaped his own music, including artists Julian Schnabel, Andy Warhol, and Robert Wilson; musicians Laurie Anderson, David Bowie, John Cale, Garland Jeffreys, Metallica, Sterling Morrison, Robert Quine, Mike Rathke, Fernando Saunders, and Maureen Tucker; manager Sylvia Reed; producer Hal Willner; photographers Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, Billy Name, and Mick Rock; poets Jim Carroll, Allen Ginsberg, Delmore Schwartz, and Anne Waldman; former Czech Republic president Václav Havel; songwriter Doc Pomus; and tai chi Grandmaster Ren GuangYi.
The exhibition will offer visitors the opportunity to experience the full range of Reed’s technologically ambitious discography in the Lou Reed listening Room. This room will allow visitors to experience a range of Reed’s work in the original intended format including mono, stereo, quadraphonic and full ambisonic spatial audio with accompanying light and visual installation. Most notably, the room will enable Metal Machine Trio: The Creation of the Universe, a sound installation developed in 2012 by Reed and Arup, to be experienced in New York for the first time.
The exhibition is curated by Don Fleming and Jason Stern. Fleming served as the archivist for the Lou Reed Archive, and Stern as Reed’s Technical Director and Archivist during the artist’s lifetime.
The Lou Reed Listening Room and content design is led by Raj Patel at Arup.
The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts’ Music & Recorded Sound Division acquired Lou Reed’s archive in 2017.”
