June 26 — Opening of IMA’s “On the Road Again with Jack Kerouac and Robert Frank”
A scroll both holy and profane. Iconic photos that 50 years ago redefined how America sees itself.
When: June 26-September 21, 2008
Where: Indianapolis Museum of Art, Schaefer and Gray Gallery
Ever feel like finite sheets of paper are always putting artificial constraints on your creativity? Jack Kerouac did. Nothing about his 120-foot-long scroll manuscript, typed on a zillion 12-foot-long sheets of tracing paper he taped together, suggests that Kerouac was one for limitations. The product of his three-week-long typing binge will be on display in almost all its glory (only 84 feet of it will be unrolled).
So will the product of Robert Frank’s two-year odyssey across the United States. The IMA has borrowed 83 of Frank’s photographs, which debuted in book form across the pond in 1958, to escort the Kerouac manuscript.
And to create the ultimate Beat experience, they have invited David Amram, a contemporary of Kerouac and Frank, to play the very sort of jazz that accompanied Kerouac’s poetry readings. It’s a veritable trifecta!
This won’t be your only chance. All summer the IMA will features these two iconic members of the American anti-establishment “Beat Generation” of the 1950s. The centerpiece of the exhibition is the original typescript for Kerouac’s 1957 cross-country odyssey, On the Road, owned by Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay. The manuscript will be accompanied by photographs taken by Robert Frank during his own two-year cross-country pilgrimage and published first in Europe in 1958 as Les Americains. The IMA will borrow the almost singular complete set of Frank’s photographs owned by the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, Massachusetts.
