Brooklyn Academy of Music To Feature Arthur Russell Exhibit

FORT GREENE, BROOKLYN — Arthur Russell was a legend in New York City. He was a cellist, a disco icon and avant garde musician. Younger people might know him as the singer who was sampled in Kanye West's The Life of Pablo (in the track "30 Hours"). For the first time in history, Russell's personal archives will be shown in March to the public at Brooklyn Academy of Art (BAM) in the Peter Jay Sharp Building.

The exhibit will feature never-before-seen compositions, notes, scores and tapes of Russell's life and music. BAM Rose Cinemas on April 20 will show a documentary about Russell's life, Wild Combination, released in 2008, to supplement the exhibit. A rare Russell performance captured on video will be shown in the theater after the documentary, and post-show, there will be a discussion with the film's director Matt Wolf; Audika Records owner Steve Knutson; and Russell's partner, Tom Lee who collected the archives and donated them to the New York Public Library.

"I just got lost in it after Arthur died. I would leave my house with cassettes based on how long I would be away. Four hours, six hours? I would take that many cassettes. It was this spiritual thing," Lee told the New Yorker of collecting Russell's archives.

Fans of Russell will talk about how his music penetrates their brains like no other artist. Per a New Yorker piece about Russell:

The musicians who were close to Russell often emphasize his playfulness, his interest in injecting joy into “serious music,” writing structures that could be played almost endlessly, and in myriad ways, with a great deal of fun. “So much of music is the kind you sit down for and frown and try to understand,” Gordon told me. “Arthur’s music retained a sense of joyfulness, a sensual wonder, a sense of beauty.” He went on, “There’s always this pure honesty in Arthur’s music that is timeless. It’s transparent enough that people are able to project themselves into it.”

Tickets for the exhibition go on sale on March 13 to BAM members and March 20 to the general public. BAM is located at 30 Lafayette Ave. in Fort Greene. The Arthur Russell exhibit runs from March 1 to May 14.

Photo via BAM