Instruments That Shaped Rock

A look at the collaboration between the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

KEITH RICHARDS IS still processing his hand-painted Les Paul’s latest gig. “The fact that it’s going to be in the Met,” he says, “Jesus Christ!” The guitar, which Richards decorated with colorful acrylics during the Beggars Banquet sessions in 1968, is featured in Play It Loud, a collaboration between New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Though the Met and the Hall of Fame previously collaborated in 1999 on an exhibit about rock fashion, this is the first major museum show to focus solely on rock & roll instruments. “There are beautiful objects here that are, no question, art,” says Met curator Jayson Kerr Dobney. “Musical instruments are the objects that are the most intimately connected to the artists, and an art museum really hasn’t tackled that subject yet.” Many of the items in the show, which runs from April 8th to October 1st in New York before heading to the Hall in Cleveland, were lent by the artists themselves. “A lot of guitarists are loaning their primary instruments that they would generally never part with,” says Craig J. Inciardi, curator of the Hall of Fame. “There was a momentum that was created that helped us out immeasurably.”

ANGIE MARTOCCIO

STREET-FIGHTING MEN1. Mick Jagger and Richards at the Beggars Banquet sessions, London, 1968. 2. Richards’ Les Paul features a bold psychedelic design.3. The exhibit also includes posters like this one for the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival.