Photography & Archival Exhibitions
Coltrane 100: John Coltrane – The Man & His Music
Curated by Leslie Willis-Lowry, lead archivist at the Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection, the Coltrane 100 exhibition highlights the story of John Coltrane’s remarkable artistry and revolutionary career. One of the most gifted jazz musicians of his generation, Coltrane offers listeners the kind of inspired playing and composing that has few equals. His beautifully controlled ballads as well as his more avant-garde material create forms of beauty, emotion, harmony, dissonance, and transcendence, which had never been heard before. With depth and spirituality, his music is emotionally charged and satisfying on every level. John Coltrane’s life and career was an inspiration, and the exhibit is sure to highlight his pursuit of artistic excellence and legacy of spiritual jazz.
The Word is the Music: The Black Press Digs Deep into Philly's Jazz Giants
Long before John Coltrane became a household name, Philadelphia's Black press was already covering him... alongside a whole network of jazz musicians building the city's sound from the ground up. The Word is the Music explores the Philadelphia jazz scene of the 1940s through 1960s as it was documented by that press, tracing how papers like the Philadelphia Tribune captured a musical community rooted in North Philadelphia. Curated by students from Jubilee School, the exhibition draws on archival ephemera (newspaper clippings, photographs, and illustrations) to reconstruct the physical and social spaces of Coltrane-era North Philadelphia. It rebuilds a sense of place: the streets, homes, and institutions that shaped a generation of musicians and the community that claimed them as its own. The materials connect Coltrane's legacy directly to the neighborhood that produced him and to the enduring role of the Black press in preserving that history.
Coltrane: The Discography
Sarah Attia has compiled a discography of John Coltrane’s recordings. We will present an exhibition of these album covers, drawn from the Charles L. Blockson Collection and other personal collections, alongside select liner notes.
