It’s only rock ‘n’ roll, but they’re enshrining it.
“Exhibitionism,” a show displaying hundreds of Rolling Stones artifacts from the group’s 50-plus-year career, will go up in Navy Pier’s Festival Hall in mid-April, the pier and exhibit promoters announced at a news conference Thursday morning.
The 18,000-square-foot extravaganza of costumes, guitars, stage sets and more is currently drawing raves in New York City after first being mounted in London. Billboard called it “an enthralling look at decades of rock history that even diehards can learn from.”
Chicago and the pier are hoping to call it a major tourism draw during its April 15-July 30 run. Adult tickets will be $25 to $35 and go on sale Feb. 24 at www.stonesexhibitionism.com.
“I want to get there before the crowd arrives,” Mayor Rahm Emanuel said in an interview, emphasizing his excitement. First seeing news of the exhibit in a City Hall briefing, he said, “I wrote, in big, bold letters, ‘This is great. When?’ ”
“In my world, it’s all called buzz,” said David Whitaker, CEO of tourism promoter Choose Chicago, “and, you know, the Rolling Stones have generated an awful lot of buzz over the years, and we get to share that aura for a while.”
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“Exhibitionism” was produced by the Australian firm iEC Exhibitions! in cooperation with the Stones, who gave curators access to the London warehouse packed with materials. The band consulted on the exhibit’s themes and presentation.
“It is a picture of the past, and it’s amazing,” said Jerry Mickelson, head of Chicago music promoter Jam Productions, whose company is a principal sponsor of “Exhibitionism” here and who has seen it in London and New York. “These guys have saved everything, and it’s amazing.
“I’ve saved things as well, but I don’t have costumes to save, or $20 million worth of guitars. … Things that you wouldn’t think you would ever get to see are on display. You’ll see Keith Richards’ diary of the first tour of the U.K., I think, in the early ’60s. I mean, it’s right there.”
Those behind the show coming here emphasized the Stones’ connection to Chicago through its blues music heritage. Throughout its career the band has credited such Chicago blues players as Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon and the Chicago label Chess Records as seminal influences. Their most recent album, December’s “Blue & Lonesome,” consists of covers of classic blues tunes.
“One of our best memories of Chicago was recording at Chess Records in June 1964,” Stones frontman Mick Jagger said in a quote provided by the exhibition’s Chicago public relations firm. “We were on our first tour of America and jumped at the chance to record with engineer Ron Malo in the studio where so many of our musical heroes had cut their records."
“We always acknowledged our debt to the music of Chicago and as our fame spread across the Atlantic, I hope we did our bit to encourage young white Americans to discover America’s rich musical heritage. It’s something that we’re still happy to be doing.”
Emanuel said at the news conference, before unveiling an 8-or-so-foot-high sculpture of the Stones’ famous lips logo, "This exhibit brings the Rolling Stones and their relationship to Chicago full circle."
The producers would not reveal how many people have seen the show in London, where it ran from April to September, and New York, where it opened in November and ends March 12, said a PR representative, but media reports suggest it has been popular. As of late Wednesday afternoon, the timed-entry tickets to see it this weekend in New York were still available, with the exception of sold-out Sunday afternoon and evening time slots and one Friday afternoon.
Video: Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones
Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones talks about "Exhibitionism."
Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones talks about “Exhibitionism.”
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Rock music has its own American museums, of course, both in Seattle (Experience Music Project Museum) and in Cleveland (Rock and Roll Hall of Fame). And giving classic rock the gallery treatment is a proven crowd-pleaser here, even at an art museum. “David Bowie Is,” a similar-sounding look at a rocker’s career and cultural influence, boosted the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago’s attendance to record levels in 2014.
"Simply, it was the most popular show we’ve ever mounted in our history in terms of attendance and press awareness and reputation building," said Michael Darling, the MCA’s chief curator, who is looking forward to seeing "Exhibitionism." "The real lasting impact of it is it helped to kind of remind us … to throw the tent doors open a bit wider."
"Museums, but also the public, are starting to think more broadly about culture and recognizing there are all kinds of overlaps and intersecting realms," Darling said. "Music seems to be one of those areas where fashion and music and art, theater, design, start to work together and therefore you can present a pretty multifaceted experience."
The Bowie exhibit felt like an exhaustive treatment, but that show, at 12,000 square feet, was two-thirds the size of “Exhibitionism.”
“The band wanted the exhibition to be sizable,” said Ileen Gallagher, “Exhibitionism’s” curator. “Most museums don’t have spaces that large. That gave us a freedom to do things in a way that were outside the museum structure.”
So the show includes a re-creation of the band’s early 1960s London apartment, somewhat squalid with beer bottles and other trash, albums by the likes of Dixon, Waters and Chuck Berry strewn about.
“You heard about that?” asked Mickelson. “They say it captures what the apartment looked like. I’ll just leave it at that for now.”
There is a mixing board that lets visitors remix some classic Stones tracks, and there is previously unseen film and photos. “I consider it the best thing I’ve done in my career,” said Gallagher, who was on the startup team at Cleveland’s Rock Hall of Fame and worked with Harley-Davidson on that company’s traveling 100th anniversary exhibition.
Where “Bowie Is” used headphones to provide discrete soundstages to accompany various artifact displays, the Stones show is designed to be communal in its sound experience, Gallagher said.
“Most of the sound is ambient sound,” she said. “The great thing about exhibitions is you can walk around with friends and talk about it in real time. Ambient sound also creates an excitement in the space.”
Both shows build to a conclusion of a concert hall-type sound and video experience.
“Exhibitionism” will occupy just a fraction of Festival Hall’s 170,000 square feet on the pier’s east end. Hosting the Stones exhibit is another part of the plan by the city’s leading tourism destination to bolster visitation by in-towners, year-rounders and those who might have snubbed what has been seen as a sort of carnival midway atmosphere.
“We are redeveloping the pier not only physically but programmatically, and this is part of the new Navy Pier,” said Marilynn Gardner, president and CEO of the lakefront structure that draws close to 9 million people a year. “It was important to us to broaden the audience and create a space that Chicagoans are proud to visit."
Programming related to "Exhibitionism’s" presence will include Stones cover bands in the seasonal beer garden, she said, and possibly Stones music backing the regular fireworks displays.
"It’s really a nod to the Pier’s future," Gardner said.
sajohnson@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @StevenKJohnson
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