By Madina Toure
The Ramones, the legendary punk-rock band hailing from Forest Hills, will be the subject of a two-part exhibition at the Queens Museum starting this April. The exhibit commemorates the 40th anniversary of the group’s first album.
The exhibit, “Hey! Ho! Let’s Go: Ramones and the Birth of Punk,” will be on view at the museum from April 10 through July 31. It will then open Sept. 16 at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles, where it will be up through March 2017.
The exhibition is organized by the Queens Museum and the Grammy Museum in collaboration with Ramones Productions Inc., JAM Inc. and Silent Partner. Marc Miller, a guest curator for the Queens Museum, and Bob Santelli, the Grammy Museum’s executive director, co-curated the exhibit.
The band’s first album, “The Ramones,” came out in April 1976.
Miller, 69, said he hung out with the Ramones a little bit in the mid-1970s when he was hanging out at CBGB, a former music club in the East Village where the band often played.
He said the Ramones management was integral to bringing the exhibition to fruition, a process that took nearly three years.
“This was quite a long, drawn out negotiation but the end result is that everyone hopped on board,” he said.
The Queens Museum’s exhibition will consist of key objects from more than 50 public and private collections throughout the world.
It will track the band’s roots in Queens and show their influence on music, fashion, fine art, comics and film. The exhibit at the Grammy Museum will place the band within the larger context of music history and pop culture.
The main themes of the two-part exhibition are places, events, songs and artists.
One highlight is a specially commissioned cartoon map by Punk Magazine co-founder John Holstrom tracing the band’s path from Forest Hills to the downtown nightclub CBGB.
Other highlights include rare artifacts such as an early press package and early fliers and lyrics, video monitors playing early Ramones shows, vintage concert fliers and photographs, the band’s iconic eagle logo that art director Arturo Vega turned into T-shirts and other merchandise, album covers and outtakes, original lyric manuscripts, guitars and leather jackets.
The presentation of the exhibition is supported by Delta Air Lines, the official airline sponsor of the Queens Museum, and Fred Heller, a member of the museum’s advisory committee and a local businessman who was once involved in the music business.
The city Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, provided additional support for the exhibition.
Reach reporter Madina Toure by e-mail at mtour
