“Open Plan: Cecil Taylor” Exhibition

The Whitney Museum of American Art

poster for “Open Plan: Cecil Taylor” Exhibition

This event has ended.

From February 26 through May 14, 2016, the Whitney Museum of American Art will present Open Plan, an experimental five-part exhibition using the Museum’s dramatic fifth-floor as a single open gallery, unobstructed by interior walls. The largest column-free museum exhibition space in New York, the Neil Bluhm Family Galleries measure 18,200 square feet and feature windows with striking views east into the city and west to the Hudson River, making for an expansive and inspiring canvas.

Pianist Cecil Taylor (b. 1929) is one of America’s most innovative and uncompromising living musicians. His pioneering work in free jazz, which draws on myriad different musical styles conveyed through radical improvisation, will be featured in the fifth-floor gallery, where he will perform on occasion, along with homage performances by friends and fellow artists. This exhibition celebrates the artist’s extraordinary life and work in a retrospective environment that will include documentation of Taylor’s career through archival videos, audio, notational scores, photographs, poetry, and other ephemera, accompanied by a series of live performances featuring over twenty of Taylor’s musical collaborators, as well as dancers, playwrights, poets, filmmakers and writers who have been deeply involved in his work (see complete schedule of events below).

Participants include Hilton Als, Cheryl Banks-Smith, Clark Coolidge, Andrew Cyrille, Steve Dalachinsky, Thulani Davis, Chris Funkhouser, Henry Grimes, Tristan Honsinger, Nathaniel Mackey, Dianne McIntyre, Jemeel Moondoc/Ensemble Muntu, Tracie Morris, Fred Moten, William Parker, Enrico Rava, A.B. Spellman, Anne Waldman, Heather Watts, and others. Throughout the galleries, listening stations will provide the chance to hear Taylor’s albums. Screenings of important films documenting Taylor’s life and performances will also be presented, including the world premiere of a new feature length performance film, The Silent Eye, that was shot in Taylor’s home over three days in January 2016.

Open Plan: Cecil Taylor is organized by curator and curator of performance Jay Sanders and Lawrence Kumpf, artistic director, Blank Forms, with senior curatorial assistant Greta Hartenstein, and Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Fellow Lauren Rosati.

Media

Schedule

from April 15, 2016 to April 24, 2016

Artist(s)

Cecil Taylor

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