Bill Graham: Rock & Roll Revolution

Project Type: Exhibition Design

Client: New-York Historical Society

With: Gerhard Schlanzky - Director of Exhibitions, Cristian Panaite - Curator

Roles: Exhibition layout, design, & drawings

One of the most influential concert promoters in history, Bill Graham (1931–1991) worked with the biggest names in rock, including the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, Santana, Led Zeppelin, and the Rolling Stones. Organized by the Skirball Cultural Center, the first comprehensive retrospective of the life and career of the legendary rock impresario features more than 300 objects that explore some of the 20th century’s momentous cultural transformations through the lens of rock & roll and looks at Graham’s personal connections to New York. The exhibition is also accompanied by an immersive audio experience.

For this exhibition I worked on the preliminary object layout and general plans. It was a challenge to fit the 300+ objects into this 3200 sq ft space when the original exhibition was in a 5500 sq ft space. It was also important that the AV team had a clear understanding of where the content areas were to coordinate the sensors for the immersive audio experience.

The top gallery consists of drawings done by myself early in the design process. The bottom gallery shows what the show looked like when opening. A Spotify playlist of the music featured in the show can be found here.

Photos by Corrado Serra.

Women March

Project Type: Exhibition Design

Client: New-York Historical Society

Under: Gerhard Schlanzky - Director of Exhibitions

Roles: Conceptual Renderings

Women March is an exhibition opening at N-YHS in 2020. These renderings were created for early concept meetings with curators to play with the idea of using object theatre as a design technique. The video shows how this could be applied in three separate content areas.