LOS ANGELES — It isn’t usually {that a} museum exhibition seems like an animated diorama of a life — transporting viewers exterior of themselves and into the world of one other. Alice Coltrane, Monument Everlasting on the Hammer Museum, curated by Erin Christovale, creates a gently pulsing orb that expands far exterior the realm of a typical exhibition. It explores the legacy of musician and religious chief Alice Coltrane, guiding museum-goers away from the every day humdrum and right into a cool trance. You’ll depart modified, and improved.
For these unacquainted with Alice Coltrane (née McLeod), briefly, she was born in 1937 right into a musical household in Detroit. She turned extraordinarily adept at piano and was mentored by the legendary jazz pianist Bud Powell. In 1965 she married famend saxophonist John Coltrane, with whom she had three boys, along with her daughter from a earlier marriage. After Coltrane’s dying in 1967, she opened and ran the Sai Anantam Ashram, devoted to religious follow and non secular schooling, in Agoura Hills, close to Los Angeles, the place she turned a swamini recognized by her adopted Sanskrit identify, Turiyasangitananda, that means “The Lord’s highest transcendental song of bliss.” She continued to document music, releasing 20 albums earlier than she handed away in 2007. Although a robust pianist and multi-instrumentalist, Coltrane was most revered for her spiritual-jazz harp. Her first harp was a present from her husband that arrived after his dying, which he possible meant to observe her open. Though that by no means occurred, the world has loved his reward for many years.
Set up view of Alice Coltrane, Everlasting Monument on the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles
In 2022, the Hammer Museum mounted an exhibition devoted to a different well-known feminine determine not readily related to visible arts, Joan Didion. The place that present got here throughout as a disjointed tribute to the late writer’s geographic ties to numerous areas, Monument Everlasting feels extremely cohesive and full. Guests study Coltrane and her musical legacy, in addition to her ties to Los Angeles, however they’re invited to contemplate the expertise of residing like her, considering like her, and dedicating oneself to religious progress. The exhibition is charged with a relaxing and exploratory vitality — the identical essence that’s sought inside divine spirituality. Music integrated all through capabilities not as background however as a method of punctuating and amplifying the curator’s meant message, a lot because it does in Coltrane’s musical follow.
The exhibition flows via three themes: Sonic Innovation, on Coltrane’s musical affect and legacy; Non secular Transcendence, on her journey to enlightenment; and Architectural Intimacy, on her penchant for world and group constructing. Featured all through the three sections are items, many commissioned for the present, from 19 modern American artists who’ve all been impacted by her life and work.
In Adee Roberson’s interactive “BLUE NILE (cosmogram #2)” (2024), guests are welcomed to face atop a selenite cosmogram platform whereas a suspended speaker overhead performs a soundtrack aligned to completely different chakras. Coltrane’s personal sketches of deities Rama and Krishna are additionally on view, and Gozié Ojini’s “44.6 lbs” (2024) greets audiences with deconstructed and defunct — defunked? — pianos, put in as if floating on a wall or cascading to the bottom. Nicole Miller’s RGB laser animation show “For Turiya” (2024), an homage to Coltrane’s adopted identify, flanks the refined entrance to a small room housing Steven Ellison’s (aka Flying Lotus) “Untitled” (2025), a soundscape created for the exhibition that includes discovered cassettes of Coltrane’s Sunday sermons at her ashram. Ellison’s is a serene and secluded house of reflection. A rectangle of cushions are surrounded by audio system and saturated within the deep orange that runs via the exhibition and its accompanying e book — a nod to the hue of many religious leaders’ clothes, together with the one which Coltrane wore nearly completely in her later years.
Steven Ellison, “Untitled” (2025), soundscape
The title, Monument Everlasting, drawn from a e book Coltrane penned in 1977, is an apt reflection of the exhibition’s strengths. It feels much less about Coltrane herself and extra in regards to the ripples of cautious intent that she prodded. It honors its topic and the invincible pressure of her creations, however it way more remarkably pays tribute to artwork as an everlasting monument. The present portrays the pursuit and expertise of artwork, and its necessity to the human situation, not solely as a type of expression of self but in addition as an expression of perception within the energy of the divine — artwork as a show of humility, a bow to the infinite. Coltrane’s life exemplifies residing artfully in service to one thing unquestionably good.
Accompanying the exhibition is a efficiency collection known as Turiya Rising, through which varied musicians, some with works within the present, carry out on a stage within the gallery crafted by GeoVanna Gonzales (“Beneath the Sun Lies the Wisdom Eye,” 2024). Once I attended a efficiency, the viewers was hushed and attentive. The musician, harpist Mary Lattimore, performed surrounded on three sides by the viewers. From my vantage level, an enormous wall-size portrait of Coltrane appeared on, her eyes seemingly transferring from viewers to Lattimore with a Mona Lisa smile. These performances emphasize the gallery as an area for reflection and exaltation as a lot as viewing, centering a type of artwork through which we’re invited to shut our eyes and really feel. Greater than throughout regular viewing hours, the collection — that includes Coltrane’s daughter, vocalist Michelle Coltrane, harpists Brandee Youthful and Lattimore, and exhibited artist Jasper Marsalis (aka Slauson Malone 1), amongst others — actively employs the gallery house as a conductor of sound, and appears to bend time to achieve Coltrane throughout mediums and years. The vinyl lettering behind the performers, seen between {photograph} and sketch items by Martine Syms, underlines the sentiment of the exhibition as an entire: “lead us from the unreal to the real.”
Rashid Johnson, “Gotta Match” (2014), burned purple oak flooring, black cleaning soap wax, spray enamel, vinyl, and shea butter
Set up view of Alice Coltrane, Everlasting Monument on the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. Pictured: GeoVanna Gonzalez, “Beneath the Sun, Lies the Wisdom Eye” (2024), powder-coated aluminum, stained glass, woven rug
Set up view of Alice Coltrane, Everlasting Monument on the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles
Set up view of Alice Coltrane, Everlasting Monument on the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles that includes a blown-up {photograph} of Coltrane c. 1978.
Set up view of Alice Coltrane, Everlasting Monument on the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. Pictured: archival supplies and two work by Alice Coltrane, (left) “Rama” and (proper) “Krishna” (each c. 1980)
Set up view of Alice Coltrane, Everlasting Monument on the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. Foreground: sculptures by Gozié Ojini (left) and Jamal Cyrus (proper); background wall: work by Jasper Marsalis.
Set up view of Alice Coltrane, Everlasting Monument on the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. Pictured: Nikita Gale, (left) “GRAVITY SOLO I (HYPERPERFORMANCE)” (2022), (proper) “HXSTXRICAL RECORD” (2022)
Alice Coltrane, Monument Everlasting continues on the Hammer Museum (10899 Wilshire Boulevard, Westwood, Los Angeles) via Might 4. The exhibition was curated by Erin Christovale with Nyah Ginwright, curatorial assistant.
