Bob Dylan, museum exhibit
If you like Bob Dylan's music and happen to be in New York City, be sure to check out the Dylan exhibit at the Morgan Library at 36th St. and Madison Ave. through Jan. 6. The time span is from his high school years on up through his motorcycle accident in 1966, after which his music made a profound shift. This is probably the first serious museum exhibition on Dylan, and it definitely has some amazing stuff.
Right up there for me was seeing Dylan's original, hand-written lyrics for "Blowing in the Wind." The material from his early life includes some paragraphs he wrote in a Hibbing (Minn.) High School yearbook, plus his own picture from the yearbook. There is a photo of his father, Abraham Zimmerman, the first I've ever seen of him, and father and son look much alike. His friendship/relationship with Joan Baez is part of the exhibit, which includes an anti-Vietnam War poster portraying Baez and two other women, possibly her sisters. The caption? "Girls Say Yes to Boys Who Say No." There are listening booths where visitors can listen to Dylan songs, or selections from filmed interviews with him at various points during his career.
The ultimate irony of this exhibit is that it is being presented in the Morgan Library, as in financier J.P. Morgan. Morgan was arguably the original "Master of War," having helped finance World War I. The Morgan Library had been rather a stuffy place, showing mostly art from the Middle Ages and rare books (like a Guttenburg Bible). Be that as it may, the exhibit is well worth your time if you happen to be in New York.