[Apparition of the young Allen Ginsberg in the window of the Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco - Photograph bySteve Silberman]
Beat Memories, Allen's photo show opened yesterday at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco. Organized by Sarah Greenough, Senior Curator and Head of the Department of Photographs at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, the show arrives in the Bay Area after a hugely successful run at the Grey Gallery, New York. Reviews and appreciations of that (which were manifold), and of the original DC exhibition, may be read here, here, here and here.
Here's a must-read - Emma Silver's piece for J Weekly - Eyes of a Generation - Beat Poet Allen Ginsberg's Snapshots of His Friends on Display at CJM
A "Gathering of Angels", last night, the opening program and party, featured a talk by Sarah Greenough (about the making of the exhibit) and a performance of an original setting of Allen's "America" (by Conspiracy of Beards' (sic) musical director, Daryl Henline). On Tuesday, there'll be a special showing of the Rob Epstein-Jeffrey Friedman "Howl" movie, and on Thursday, Quiet Lightning present (as part of their "Neighborhood Heroes" series) a special Ginsberg-inspired show.
More CJM San Francisco events planned in the months ahead (including a three-day festival scheduled to take place July 11-14 (there's more information about that here)
and upcoming, (May 31), next week, Jean-Jacques Lebel's multi-media extravaganza at
Centre Pompidou-Metz (included in that will be the world-premiere of Lebel (& Xavier Villetard)'s t.v. documentary, "Beat Generation - Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs".
(For more information on that, see here)
Disappointed to see the New York Howl Festival (also opening May 31) is using that lazy "Moonlight Madness" quote - Well, at least they didn't advertise it with "And The Beat Goes On"!
Delighted to see Steve Silberman's "Celestial Homework" ("It's never too late..") get some significant belated dissemination (it's also included in Jim Cohn's Museum of American Poets "Big Beat Bibliography" site (courtesy Randy Roark)
To end today's Round-Up on a sad note - We note, belatedly (he died this past month, April 26), the passing of ecologist, anthropologist, biologist, and environmental activist, Peter Warshall. A touching tribute by his neice, Rose, is available here. Audio from a number of his illuminating talks at Naropa in the (19)90's can be accessed here ("On Squirrels On Earth and Stars Above", for example). A late (but, nonetheless moving and inspiring) video(d) presentation, "Enchanted by the Sun" (recorded this past November for The Long Now Foundation) is available here. Do you know where your water comes from?
[Peter Warshall (1940-2013]
and Doorsmaestro, rock legend, Ray Manzarek. Ray on Allen (in 1991) - "Allen Ginsberg was fabulous. The man is so filled with energy. He's 65 years old and he's just loaded with energy and charm and wit and his mind is constantly racing" - Michael McClure on Ray & Allen - "I love Allen because when Ray Manzarek and I perform on a double-bill with (him), Ray imagines he's looking at the Russian Revolution and Mayakovsky, and that we are going to go out of the music club (to) sing and march in the streets". Ray again - "I suppose if Jack Kerouac had never written On The Road, the Doors would never have existed. It opened the floodgates.." Here's (from the city that made him famous) Ray Manzarek's obituary, in the L.A. Times.
[Ray Manzarek 1939-2013]