Amy Winehouse exhibition to open at The Design Museum, Kensington, London.

Sunday, October 24, 2021

"Amy: Beyond the Stage", a major retrospective exhibition about Amy Winehouse’s life and career is to open at the Design Museum in Kensington on 26 November 2021. Details attached.

We have received the following information from the National Jazz Archive, who will be contributing to the Exhibition;

Amy: Beyond the Stage – Design Museum, London

The National Jazz Archive is delighted to be contributing to the major retrospective exhibition about Amy Winehouse’s life and career that opens at the Design Museum in Kensington on 26 November. It is the first such exhibition of the singer’s life in the UK and comes 10 years after her death, aged just 27.

Priya Khanchandani, head of curatorial at the Design Museum, describes how the show focuses on Winehouse’s musicianship, fashion sense and the dozens of stylistic influences she drew from during her career: “It felt like there was something that had been left unsaid about Amy’s story and about her as a serious musician – the way she’s been reflected in the media has really diminished her legacy. There’s a lot of noise surrounding her story that has engulfed it and I’ve been trying to pick away at the layers, and make sure we tell the right story.”

Material loaned by the National Jazz Archive includes beautifully illustrated programmes featuring Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan, two of the important jazz influences on which Amy drew. There are also journals and listings magazines from the early 2000s, just as Amy was starting to make a name for herself. They include Jazz in London, where Amy is listed for her early appearances at Pizza Express.

The exhibition includes much, much more. The ‘finale’ is an immersive semicircular space where multiple computer-generated figures of Winehouse and handwritten material from her archive have been turned into an animated experience by Studio Moross.

Other items include examples of her clothing, her first electric guitar, a Daphne blue Fender Stratocaster that she used her debut album Frank. The show also details how Winehouse wrote and recorded her seminal album Back to Black, which made her an international star.

https://designmuseum.org/exhibitions/amy-beyond-the-stage

http://www.nationaljazzarchive.org.uk

The Design Museum is located at 224 - 238 Kensington High Street, London W8 6AG