FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Vintage Grateful Dead Concert Poster Exhibition Opening September 21
Psychedelic Art Posters from 1960s on view at Bahr Gallery, Oyster Bay, N.Y.
OYSTER BAY, N.Y. (September 10, 2024) – The Bahr Gallery, an art gallery dedicated to rare, first-edition, psychedelic rock poster art, will feature vintage Grateful Dead posters in an exhibition opening September 21, and running through January 4, 2025.
Bahr Gallery is located at 95 Audrey Ave., Oyster Bay NY 11771. The Bahr Gallery is open Friday and Saturday from 1:30-5:30pm and by appointment. Admission to the Exhibition is free. An opening night reception will be held Saturday September 21 from 6-8pm.
The Grateful Dead were in the epicenter of the psychedelic poster revolution. With their exotic sounding name, their heritage as part of the early “Acid Tests” in San Francisco and their improvisational music often featuring extended jams, the Grateful Dead were creative gold for the San Francisco poster artists.
While each of San Francisco’s “Big Five” poster artists; Wes Wilson, Stanley Mouse, Victor Moscoso, Rick Griffin, and Alton Kelley made posters advertising Grateful Dead concerts, Griffin and Mouse and Kelley were most closely associated with the band’s visual expression.
Highlights of the Exhibition include the famous 1966 “Skeleton & Roses” poster by Mouse and Kelley that became a core part of the Dead’s iconography, as well as a first edition “Aoxomoxoa,” by Rick Griffin, an oversized 1969 poster later used for the band’s third album cover, a very rare piece from Stockton CA 1967, the iconic 1968 poster known as the “Santana Lion,” the Dead playing with Miles Davis in 1970, and a poster for MIT 1970, which came just two days after the shootings at Kent State. More than 40 works in total comprise the Exhibition and 15 works have never been shown at the Bahr Gallery before.
Virtually all pieces are first editions, and are accompanied with meticulous background and history, placing each piece in context. Much of this art currently hangs in the Smithsonian, Metropolitan Museum of Art, MOMA, the Louvre, and other leading museums and institutions around the world.
“We are curating the visual experience for admirers of this art, the music, and its special time in history,” said gallery owner and curator Ted Bahr. “While the Grateful Dead was not nearly as widely popular in the sixties as they would later become, their active participation in the San Francisco rock concert scene left a large visual legacy of posters advertising their appearances – many of which are rarely seen.”
The Bahr Gallery, which opened in April 2018, has several rooms totaling 1,200 square feet and features nearly 70 psychedelic master works on rotation. Past Exhibitions include “Woodstock and Other Festivals,” and “The British Invasion.”
MEDIA CONTACT:
Ted Bahr
516-283-1967 (main Gallery Number)
516-532-5459 (m)
ted@bahrgallery.com