Punk #3, April 1976, with cover illustration by John Holmstrom. The artist is making a special Ramones map for the exhibition.
Marc H. Miller of 98 Bowery and Gallery 98 has co-curated the upcoming exhibition Hey! Ho! Lets Go: The Ramones and the Birth of Punk, announced last week in the New York Times. The exhibition commemorates the 40th anniversary of the Ramones’ first album (Ramones), with an opening April 10 at the Queens Museum (New York), a mile away from Forest Hills High School, where the Ramones first met. Hey! Ho! Let’s Go is a collaboration with the Grammy Museum (Los Angeles), where a variant exhibition will open on September 16.
The Queens Museum celebrates the Ramones alongside the visual artists who helped create their image, and that of punk. As co-curator of the 1978 Punk Art show at the Washington Project for the Arts, Miller worked closely with many of the artists who will be featured in Hey! Ho! Let’s Go. John Holmstrom, co-founder of Punk magazine, will be making a cartoon map of the Ramones’ paths in Queens and New York for the upcoming exhibition. Also returning from the 1978 show is Roberta W. Bayley, whose Ramones photoshoot provided the album cover for Ramones. Late Ramones art director Arturo Vega, who designed the band’s famous logo, will be represented by a wall of his t-shirt designs.
Hey! Ho! Let’s Go draws from the collections of those closest to the Ramones, including Linda Ramone (widow of Johnny Ramone), Mickey Leigh (brother of Joey Ramone), Claudia Tienan (longtime partner of Tommy Ramone), and Vera Ramone King (ex-wife of Dee Dee Ramone). The band’s longtime tour manager, Monte A. Melnick, has also opened his vast archives for the exhibition, which comprises more than 350 items. Of special note are new paintings by Shepard Fairey and Yoshitomo Nara, done specially for Hey! Ho! Let’s Go.
