Local press is abuzz with coverage of the Duke University Center for International Studies’ new gallery exhibition at the Durham Art Guild. Pathways to Unknown Worlds: Sun Ra, El Saturn and Chicago’s Afro-Futurist Underground 1954 – 1968, co-sponsored by the Franklin Humanities Institute, opens tonight at 120 Morris Street in downtown Durham.The Durham Herald-Sun’s Cliff Bellamy notes, after watching Durham Art Guild director, Jennifer Collins-Mancour as she oversaw the exhibition’s installation,
Aficionados of vinyl records likely will find this exhibit a gold mine. Many of the works on the walls were of sketches for album covers. The album covers themselves were leaning against the wall waiting to be hung.
In this exhibit, a visitor in some cases can match an artist’s sketch with the final album cover. On view, for example, is a colored pencil and pastel drawing, on paper, for the “Jazz in Silhouette” album, and the cover also is on display. A sketch for the recording “Angels and Demons at Play” is on view, as is the album cover. In some cases, the exhibit has the individual silk screens for the color separations used to print the album covers, and visitors will be able to see those with the albums, Collins-Mancour said.
In a separate piece, Bellamy recounts Sun Ra’s many transits through Durham, noting that
Ra must have liked the vibe in Durham, because he returned in December 1988 for a concert at Under the Street, a now defunct music club on Broad Street. In a phone interview before that concert, he said, “I’m a prime minister sent to this planet to help it. In my music, I’m telling people things. I’m enlightening them. I’m trying to tell them that there is a superior being who really cares about them and that they’re on the right road, but they’re going in the wrong direction.”
Finally, Duke News’ Michele Lynn, writing for This Month at Duke recounts the cross-campus effort to bring Pathways to Unknown Worlds to Durham, as well as noting the numerous events surrounding the exhibition, including a Duke Performances concert by the Sun Ra Arkestra, as well as a DUCIS/FHI interview with Arkestra director, Marshall Allen and a panel discussion with the exhibit curators, both on September 25 in the Franklin Center.
