Monterey at 60! A Visual Feast, an exhibit exploring 60 years of Monterey Jazz Festival posters, opens Friday, August 18th at the Carl Cherry Center for the Arts. A reception will be held from 5 to 7 p.m. on Friday, August 18th. The event is free and open to the public.
Showcasing six decades of Monterey Jazz Festival images, Monterey at 60! tells the story of the festival through its graphic imagery and photographic moments, capturing the experience through posters, program covers dating back to 1958.
Alongside sixty years of some of the greatest jazz in the United States, the exhibit will showcase posters which embody the spirit of the Festival as a whole: posters which represent all the great music and the complementary “scene” that exists just outside the venues hosting that music.
The Monterey Jazz Festival posters were created by graphic artists, such as Earl Newman, throughout the Festival’s history and have become an iconic and fitting symbol of 60 years of great music and food, folklore, and human fellowship. The posters have come to herald each year’s musical fare–unveiled annually when the artists to appear were first announced. Collaboration on the part of graphic artists established a unique Festival brand, one of its icons a trumpet stationed on a chair, often with a sylvan ocean setting in the background. This feast of posters reflects the beauty and abundance of music that graced Monterey Jazz Festival stages, and the multitude of fans who have embraced the music.
The exhibit can be seen through September 15th during gallery hours: Wednesday through Friday from 11 to 4 p.m.; Saturdays, noon to 4 p.m.
