If you miss the experience of concerts and live entertainment, the Springfield Museums latest exhibit will transport you into the center of some of the most iconic performances in modern music history.
Front Row Center: Icons of Rock, Blues and Soul is currently open through May 1st at the D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts. The exhibit features the photography of Larry Hulst, who has chronicled five decades worth of concerts from some of rock’s biggest acts.
Zydalis Bauer spoke with Maggie North, Curator of Art for the Springfield Museums, to learn more about the exhibition.
Learn how museums exhibits like Front Row Center come together in this digital exclusive interview with Maggie North.
Read the full transcript:
Zydalis Bauer, Connecting Point: If you are missing the experience of concerts and live entertainment, the Springfield Museum’s latest exhibit will transport you into the center of some of the most iconic performances in modern music history.
“Front Row Center: Icons of Rock, Blues and Soul” is currently open through May 1st at the D’amour Museum of Fine Arts and features the photography of Larry Hulst, who has chronicled five decades worth of concerts.
I spoke with Maggie North, curator of art for the Springfield Museums, to learn more about the exhibition.
Maggie North, Springfield Museums: We were really excited to bring this exhibition to Springfield, not just because the photographs are stellar examples of a unique and exciting approach to photography, but also because the show in its totality really chronicles the history of modern music in an exciting way. So, this is an opportunity for people who love music, people who love photography to come together and to see icons of rock, blues, and soul, as the exhibition title suggests.
Larry Hulst was born in California. He joined the military and returned to that area in 1969, where he began taking photographs of concerts. It was a way to combine his two passions of photography and going to see live music. And he’s had an incredible career as a photojournalist. His work has been published in major magazines like “Guitar” and “Rolling Stone.”
He’s also been able to share his photographs through exhibitions like this one, and when he was a young man, he actually worked for a college newspaper and got his start as a photojournalist that way. His approach, really, to photography involves being a concert goer.
First, he loves to be in the audience, and so his photographs often frame the performers from the perspective of the viewers. And when we see the photographs in the gallery, we have a sense of being right there with him.
Zydalis Bauer: I read somewhere and one of the interviews that he did that I think at some point he was going to like 10 concerts a month, which was incredible. And as you mentioned, that perspective that he gives like it really gives you essentially a front row seat to these different moments in time. I think it’s — there’s been iconic and outstanding performances that are chronicled in this exhibit.
Can you talk about some of those examples that visitors can expect to see? And do you think that there’s something for everyone?
Maggie North: Absolutely. Visitors can expect to see images of classic rock icons like AC/DC or Led Zeppelin. They can also expect to see images of rock that is early pioneering rock, like Chuck Berry. They can see examples of the Talking Heads or New Wave or kind of alternative versions of rock. And so in that way, I think there really is something for everybody in this show.
And of course, the exhibition also highlights the Blues genre with masters of the genre like B.B. King, Muddy Waters, and Bo Diddley, who paved the way for rock ‘n’ roll music to be created and to thrive in this country. And of course, there are also artists represented in the show who crisscrossed these boundaries. Artists like Ray Charles, who maybe didn’t stick to one in particular, but we’re influenced by so many.
And so I think when viewers come in, they will be surprised by the incredible variety within this exhibition and the moments in which there are opportunities to reflect on concerts that you may know of, or you may have heard of the artists, as well as learn about new artists.
Zydalis Bauer: And I think some of these artists that are featured in this exhibit have passed away. So, it’s like this is the — the visitor’s chance to see that moment in history that won’t happen again.
So, I think that’s really neat about the exhibit as well.
Maggie North: Larry Hulst had this incredible ability, in part because he went to so many concerts, to capture musicians at high points in their career and sometimes at the very end of their career. He captured Janis Joplin and Jerry Garcia, the years in which those artists passed away.
So, his photographs are made sort of that much more memorable and that much more special by the particular times in which he was there, ready, and waiting to photograph them.
Zydalis Bauer: So, now this exhibition features over 70 images from Hulst’s nearly three thousand collection of black and white negatives that spans over five decades of rock, blues, and soul history.
What have been some of your favorite images within the exhibit? And have you personally been able to connect with any of them?
Maggie North: One of the images that I immediately connected with was a photograph of Lauryn Hill that was taken in the late 1990s as she had started her solo career,and were sort of catapulting to fame. And I think that different generations will come to this exhibition with different elements that they’re looking for and different favorite pieces within this show, but I know that Lauryn Hill was majorly influential in the music that I was listening to at a certain point in my life, and continues to influence artists today, and we can actually see that lineage of influence throughout the exhibition.
So many of these artists were looking back to artists before them. And so it’s exciting, I think, for our visitors to come in and choose the image that they connect with most.
Zydalis Bauer: And this exhibition really features the intersection of music and photography, and as you’ve mentioned, it transports us to these moments in time and history.
What is the relationship between these two art forms and how do they complement one another?
Maggie North: Music and photography both have an ability to spark memories within us when we, as viewers, connect with them. I think they have the ability to capture moments and to make us think differently about a moment or a scene.
So many viewers, when they’ve walked through this space, have really enjoyed an element which is part of this exhibition, where we have speakers available for folks to actually listen to the music when they’re looking at the photograph of the artist. And so, that makes that an immediate connection for our visitors and, as you said, allows visitors to feel transported.
This is an exhibition that brings together the power of art — the art form of photography, as well as the power of the art form of music.
Zydalis Bauer: This is the second bilingual exhibition that the Springfield Museums have featured, with text being in English and Spanish. The first one was “The Body Adorned.”
Why has this been an important element for you to include in exhibits? And will it be an ongoing feature?
Maggie North: We’re really excited to be able to offer this show in bilingual Spanish and English text, and it is something that we hope to do going forward. We want to make these exhibits accessible for all of our audience members.
So, we’re so excited and we welcome all visitors into the space.
Zydalis Bauer: The photographs capture that live energy and emotion that is unmatched in presence in live performances, and it’s a feeling that many of us have not been able to experience for the past two years during this pandemic.
What do you hope the impact of this exhibition will be on visitors?
Maggie North: You’re so right! Music can be such a communal experience, and I think it can be so, so powerful for both the musicians and the performers. And these photographs allow us to make that connection even if we weren’t there.
We’re allowed to witness it and to make that connection to the performer, in part because of the virtuoso of Larry Hulst as a photographer. He composes images beautifully and uses black and white in order to really frame the image and to emphasize the performer. So, I hope that visitors come away from this exhibit enjoying some nostalgia of the past perhaps, while additionally learning about new musicians that they may not have been familiar with.
And I hope that they also have an opportunity to reflect on their own best concert memories and the way in which the arts — whether it’s music or it’s visual art — really can bring us together and can provide us with, not only a new way to look at the world, but a connection with another human being.
