The Velvet Underground Multimedia Experience Coming To NYC

A multimedia art and music exhibition showcasing The Velvet Underground’s early years will open in the band’s hometown of New York City. Co-presented by Bandsintown and Citi, The Velvet Underground Experience will open at 718 Broadway in Greenwich Village beginning on October 10.

Here’s what The Velvet Underground Experience entails:

The exhibition will feature never-before-seen, immersive and interactive content structured around six main sections — Welcome to America, Reed and Cale, The Childhood of Art, NY Spirit, Factory Years, Banana Album, Reinventions of The Velvet Underground and Echoes of Heritage — offering fans a chronological tour, from Lou Reed and John Cale’s childhoods to the band’s influences on contemporary art as of today. The Velvet Underground Experience will also highlight how the spirit and range of The Velvet Underground captivated the music world and continued to influence artists over the decades. Far from being limited to just the musical sphere (from Kurt Cobain to LCD Soundsystem), The Velvet Underground’s artistic waves washed over art (from Mapplethorpe to Basquiat), photography (from Stephen Shore to Nan Goldin), cinema (from Jim Jarmusch to Todd Haynes) and fashion (from Agnes b to Hedi Slimane) : the band continues to inspire or amuse pop culture.

The exhibition debuted in 2016 in France at La Philharmonie de Paris — the largest music and art museum in Europe. The New York City run will span three months.

“The first thing I noticed when I visited the Paris Velvet Underground Experience Exhibit was the number of different locations that The Exploding Plastic Inevitable had visited and the faithfulness of the detail that is contained in the show,” said Cale. “The expansive mixed media elements highlight the great variety of responses to the EPI events wherever they appeared. This was not only about The Velvet Underground. Whatever was created in the Factory did not stay in the Factory. What Andy [Warhol] had started at the Cinematheque by projecting film onto The Velvet Underground became exponentially more complex as the elements found new focus with each city, town or venue. These historical visits are contained in their raw energy in the current rooms of the Exhibit. They show the progress in personal expression not only in the disciplines of music, art and film, but the political servitude of the day. The pride and fear in our excitement made these expressions of urban continuity something we would never forget.”

Tickets go on sale this Friday, August 17 at 10 a.m. E.T. Find details here.