The Velvet Underground Experience - exhibition & book

Book on presale (promo code VU saves 20%):
The Velvet Underground Experience

Next up, we’ve joined forces with a band of influential French curators who are bringing their successful 2016 Velvet Underground exhibition from Paris to the States this October, beginning with New York City. You can find out more and purchase advance tickets by visiting The Velvet Underground Experience.

The exhibition will travel around the US for the next several years, with stops in Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

A New York Exhibition about the Velvet Underground

 

Thanks for the tip, got my tix for 11/20.

 

you will like it Ralph , i went in Paris and its great .

 

Thanks, you may have just saved me airfare to New York... I really want to go see the exhibition in person but it would cost me. @dlemaudit did it have a lot of previously unseen stuff? Is it worth travelling to go see or do you think the catalogue would suffice?

 

its a different experience than the music , if you are a fan , its a must .
Unseen photos and testimonials , very comprehensive and fascinating stories about NYC and The Factory . It really shows how unique they were .

 

I'm going to this on Saturday.

 

Please report back.
Between this and the Warhol retrospective (with the movies!) at the Whitney I have to make sure my leather jacket is polished.

 

it's mentioned above that it's coming to San Francisco, but I can't find that information anywhere else. Anyone know when? I imagine maybe end of next year?

 

"Fall 2019"

https://static1.squarespace.com/sta...rground+Experience+07+-+corrected+grammar.pdf

 

Very nice file.

This exhibition seems heavily weighted towards the edition of the band with John Cale in it. It seem to be the powerful image of the band and cultural interest comes from that earlier period, in particular with the connection to Warhol.

Musically I think the later period with Doug Yule was the more influential (there's certainly far, far more music from this period). They peaked in 1969 for me.

 

I'm going on Sunday...........after seeing The Feelies play a set of VU songs on Saturday.

 

If it's the same thing that was in Paris then yes, it's good if heavily weighted towards the Warhol era.

I bought a huge poster of the picture from the back of WL/WH that hangs in my hallway to this day. It lists the price as "Chicks 25c off"

 

A taste of what to expect:

a first look at The Velvet Underground Experience which opens in NYC this week

 

I enjoyed it quite a bit when I saw it in Paris. The Doug Yule years get really slighted though.

 

Ignored or actively criticised?

The strong imagery of the band from the art to the photos, to Nico and the dancers, the light shows mostly come from the Andy Warhol period. The band changed after Cale left and both live and in the studio the music became less about shock than it had been but I like it more.

 

Ignored pretty much.

“Welcome to America,” ” Reed and Cale,” “The Childhood of Art,” “NY Spirit,” “Factory Years,” “Banana Album,” 196?-1968
“Reinventions of The Velvet Underground” 1969-1970
“Echoes of Heritage” 1970-now

 

Thanks for that!

It's not atypical. Look who is in the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame, who played on the reunion tour, there's a new documentary being talked about and you can bet dollars to donuts that will concentrate on the early years. I'm not saying that period doesn't deserve attention, it was really marvelous.

 

Can anyone who's been tell me how much time I need for this? I'm going to an early show but I do have to catch a train in the afternoon.

Also, how much cash will I blow on merch that I'll struggle to get home?

 

I just saw an article about the exhibition. The photo for the article of the outside of the building tells a tale. John, Lou, Moe, Sterling, Nico and Andy. No Doug in sight!

https://nypost.com/2018/10/11/how-velvet-underground-became-a-cultural-juggernaut/

 

There are a couple of interesting articles around John Cale's visit to the exhibition.

John Cale’s Velvet Underground Talk: 10 Things We Learned – Rolling Stone

A Walk Through Velvet Underground History With John Cale

The crowd at Café Bizarre did not love the Velvet Underground.CreditRebecca Smeyne for The New York Times

 

Same, I'm trying to figure out if I can see both this and the Warhol retrospective (opens at the Whitney in November) in one afternoon...

 

I went today (Saturday)...I think you can safely budget 2 hours. Honestly, I was done in about 70 minutes. It sorta depends on how long you want to do immersive things -- watching every second of the multiple video and audio installations, etc. Somethings I watched the entire program, some I just popped into. There's a listening area where you can stretch out and hear VU tunes and see some visuals, but honestly, they're songs you've heard a zillion times before, so I didn't see the need to linger too long.

Don't spring for the VIP admission: Huge ripoff. The crowds are very well managed, and it gets you nothing but a bigger bill and a flimsy poster.

There's a bottleneck at the first photo exhibit, but after that it opens up nicely. I never had to wait to watch or listen to something, or to handle one of the big books of personal history and photos they have about each member and key New York art scene figures.

Once I got over the whole "wow, this formerly edgy band is now a tourist exhibit for rich dads" thing, I quickly realized that it's a thoughtful, very well curated installation. I saw a lot of film footage and photographs that I had never seen before. The ten-minute movie about Nico is filled with great moments that I had mostly not seen before. It does a great job of placing the Velvet Underground in the artist milieu of their era, with great information about artists, photographers, musicians, and filmmakers that were a part of their scene. The downstairs stuff, which focuses on artists other than the VU, may have been my favorite part. Lots of fantastic original artifacts (flyers, books, LPs, and such) in between the reproduced photographs. No instruments on display, which is maybe a missed opportunity.

That said, it's all really about the formation and Warhol era. The band's resonance and influence is barely touched upon, but we all know how that turned out.

Merch is super lame. Mostly t-shirts and iPhone/laptop cases. Not music, which seems weird, since that's what made them great. I was hoping for an exclusive LP or 7" or something, but nope. There's a vintage shop upstairs that wasn't open when I was there, but has some cool LPs and paperbacks. God knows what they're going to charge for them, as nothing was priced. When I asked why they weren't opened and why nothing was priced, I was told that the shop's curator "was French."

 

That depends on how much time you want to spend with the Warhol films, which I understand are part of the exhibit. Me, I'm all in for "Chelsea Girls" if it's there, and the screen tests.

 

Good point! Empire anyone? I’d love to see all the screen tests in particular. I found a catalogue at the library but of course that is just still images and not the real thing. Also would love to see the film Warhol made of the Velvets getting their tarot cards read, I wonder if that would be at either exhibition?