Boston Exhibit Celebrates the Guitar
B O S T O N, Nov. 3, 2000 -- As curator Darcy Kuronen installed his upcomingexhibit, he cradled one of the show’s painted centerpieces in hisarms, pointing to the graceful lines, the bold colors and theleft-handed whammy bar Jimi Hendrix twanged into fame.
Hendrix’s 1967 Gibson Flying V guitar, colorful swirls repaintedonto the body, is part of a fall exhibit at the Museum of Fine Artsthat hardly conjures the image of staid masterpieces and dustymuseum galleries: the guitar as objet d’art.
From Stradivari to Prince
There are about 130 guitars in the “Dangerous Curves” exhibit, which opens Sunday. Ivory-inlaid guitars. Guitars shaped as lyres.Spangled guitars. An inflatable guitar. A transparent guitar.Guitars with five necks. With 42 strings. A 300-year-old guitarcrafted by instrument-maker Antonio Stradivari. A banana-coloredelectric Yellow Cloud, a guitar formerly owned by The ArtistFormerly Known As Prince who now goes by the name he formerly wasknown as — Prince.
“This is a fun show, and it brings a different viewpoint,”says Kuronen, the museum’s curator of musical instruments. “I think it would personally be kind of boring if we were always doing paintings.”
A Stratocaster guitar may not have quite the lasting greatnessof, say, a van Gogh painting. But the guitar — as a mirror ofpopular culture and changing fashion — is worthy of examination, hesays.
He calls the guitar an “instrument of the people.” Unlikeinstruments that have remained essentially the same for centuries,the guitar is a palette of changing popular culture.
“The guitar has always rapidly responded to changes in fashionand music,” Kuronen says. “They always mirror what else is going on. No one restyles a saxophone to reflect current fashion.”
Some of the instruments at the exhibit are centuries old, likethe baroque guitar made by Stradivari in 1700, and a French guitarfrom 1693 with a back made of a tortoise shell.
Others, such as the 1920s-era Stroh guitar made for recording,looks like a cross between a trombone and a sitar. A Harmony harpguitar from the same era looks like two guitars fused—earning itnicknames like “straddlevarius” and “stereosaurus.”
The Perfect JamDavid Bonsey, an instrument appraiser with Skinner Auctioneersand Appraisers of Antiques and Fine Art in Boston, said some of theinstruments are priceless. Others are rare, but all represent thevast diversity of the guitar.
“This is the first exhibit ever put on by a major museum thatcelebrates the guitar as a piece of art,” Bonsey says. “Theworkmanship is of quite a high level, and not only are theyartistic pieces, but they are practical as musical instrumentsalso.”
A guitar player himself, Bonsey recently jammed on one of themuseum’s rare arch-top instruments during a PBS taping of theAntiques Road Show. It was, he said, a thrill.
“We broke into this little jam session, and that was a sessionthat can never be matched. It was such a rare guitar and it was sospecial, and it just sounded great,” he says.
Then there are the celebrity guitars, including John Lennon’sfirst guitar, bearing a plaque with his Aunt Mimi’s apocryphalcareer counseling words: “Remember — you’ll never earn your livingby it.”
There’s also J. Geil’s 1936 early Gibson electric, Gene Autry’s1927 C.F. Martin and Co. cowboy guitar and the Five-Headed Monsterowned by Cheap Trick’s Rick Nielsen, who has been known to joke,“This guitar still gets more applause than I probably ever will.”
Guitar as an Extention
Larry Baione, chairman of the guitar department at Boston’sBerklee School of Music, is excited to see some of the instrumentscradled by his musical icons.
What museum-goers will see, he says, is the guitar as anintimate instrument, an “instrument of the people,” with asignature appearance as well as a signature sound.
“It’s a wonderful way for people to get to know the completeart of playing a musical instrument,” Baione says, “because partof that is the instrument itself.”
The exhibit runs until Feb. 25.