Rita Marley and Chris Murray at the Marley Resort and Spa in Nassau. Copyright ©Carlotta Hester. All Rights Reserved.

Rita had been to Govinda Gallery in April of 2009 when she was last in Washington with Ziggy Marley who was preforming at the White House Easter Egg Roll. Rita came to Govinda to enjoy David Burnett’s exhibition Soul Rebel featuring photographs of Bob Marley and the Reggae scene in 1975 in Jamaica and in 1976 during the Exodus Tour in Europe. There are some wonderful photos of Rita and the I-Threes in that exhibition and book of the same name.

President Obama with his family and Rita and Ziggy Marley.

I had with me a copy of the book Rolling Stones 40 x 20, which I edited, and showed Rita the wonderful photo by Michael Putland of Mick Jagger with Bob Marley and Peter Tosh, which she enjoyed very much.

Bob Marley, Mick Jagger, and Peter Tosh. Copyright ©Michael Putland. All Rights Reserved.

I also gave Rita the invitation card to Govinda Gallery’s exhibition in Havana at Fototeca de Cuba from 2002, La Revolucion del Rock and Roll, which featured Kate Simon’s photograph of Bob Marley on the invitation card. Kate’s photo is also currently featured in the Sound and Vision exhibition that just began at the Columbus Museum in Columbus, Georgia. We also had a lovely time with Stephanie Marley who tastefully manages the Marley Hotel. It is a lovely place to stay with only 16 rooms and a beautiful garden atmosphere.

Stephanie Marley and Carlotta Hester at the Marley Resort and Spa in Nassau. Copyright ©Chris Murray. All Rights Reserved.

I was excited to hear from Rita that Cedella Marley has designed the costumes for the Jamaican Olympic team for the opening ceremony of this summer’s 2012 Olympics in London. We will be there.

Bob Venosa (January 21, 1936 – August 9, 2011)
Bob Venosa was one of the great visionary artists it was our pleasure to show at Govinda Gallery. I first met Bob in Cadaques, Spain, where I was living during the summer of 1972 with artists Howard Carr and Kim Waters. Bob came to Cadaques to meet Salvador Dali. We knew Dali and were performing as a musical trio every evening at Dali’s home in Port Lligat, while he entertained guests by his swimming pool in his surreal garden. We brought Bob to Dali’s home and introduced him to the great master painter, and we remained friends ever since. Bob’s paintings were featured in several exhibitions at Govinda including two one-person shows in 1984 and 1980. We reproduce here the invitations from those two exhibitions along with a photograph of Bob Venosa showing Albert Hoffman his portrait of the legendary scientist who discovered LSD. We will miss Bob and his enormous talent and charm.

Scientist Albert Hoffman with artist Bob Venosa and his portrait of Hoffman.

Astral Circus (Detail), 1980. Copyright ©Bob Venosa. All Rights Reserved.

Kara Kennedy (February 27, 1960 – September 16, 2011)
Kara was a great friend of mine and of Govinda Gallery’s for over thirty years. Her presence at our exhibitions always lit up the room. It was a real pleasure this year to give Kara a tour of Alfred Werthiemer’s Elvis at 21 exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, along with her dear friend Linda Donovan and Photojournalist David Burnett. We all had a great day together.

Here is a photo of Kara at Govinda Gallery’s 25th anniversary party at Halcyon House published in the December/January 2001 issue of George Magazine which was edited by her cousin John Kennedy.

Robert Whitaker (November 13, 1939 – September 20, 2011)
Robert Whitaker used to love to visit Govinda Gallery and Georgetown on his visits to America from his home in England. Bob was a wonderful photographer who was most famous for his banned “butcher block” photograph on the original album cover for the Beatles Yesterday and Today. Bob’s photographs were included in a number of Govinda exhibitions, most notably our tribute to George Harrison in 2002. Bob also photographed Eric Clapton and Cream for their Disraeli Gears album cover and accompanied John Lennon to Japan and took many great photographs of him on that journey. He also took an incredible collection of photographs of Salvador Dali. Bob had a great sense of humor and we will miss him.

Photographer Robert Whitaker.

Original cover for Yesterday and Today by Robert Whitaker.

Front and back covers for Cream’s Disraeli Gears. Photographs by Robert Whitaker.

Donovan, Chris Murray, and Robert Whitaker at Govinda’s 25th Anniversary exhibition in September, 2000. Copyright ©Neshan Naltchayan. All Rights Reserved.

George Harrison at Regents Park Zoo in London. Copyright ©Robert Whitaker. All Rights Reserved.

Barry Feinstein (February 4, 1931 – October 20, 2011)
Govinda Gallery is proud to have hosted Barry Feinstein’s first exhibition, simply titled Barry Feinstein: Photographs in 2002. His extraordinary images of Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, George Harrison and King Curtis are known throughout the world. Barry’s dear friend Donovan came to his opening reception at Govinda Gallery and played several songs in honor of Barry. Photographers Jim Marshall and Danny Clinch attended that opening as well. The Washington Post art critic, Jessica Dawson, wrote of “Barry Feinstein’s iconic toilet graffiti photographs”, that were featured in the Rolling Stones 40×20 exhibition at Govinda in October of 2002. Those photographs were used for the front and back covers of the Rolling Stones album Beggars Banquet. Barry’s photographs of George Harrison were also featured in our tribute exhibition to George in 2002. Barry was always generous, creative, and a loyal friend. We love you Barry.

Photographer Barry Feinstein.

Beggars Banquet, front and back covers, 1968. Copyright ©Barry Feinstein. All Rights Reserved.

Barry Feinstein’s photograph for the cover of Janis Joplin’s Pearl, taken just a few days before she passed away.

If you’re interested in Elvis Presley’s music from his golden year of 1956 there is a new box set called Young Man with the Big Beat that is terrific. It contains 4 CD’s of Elvis’ complete 1956 masters and a separate CD with his interviews from that year. The wonderful 86 page booklet features Alfred Wertheimer’s photograph of Elvis on the cover. Wertheimer’s exhibition Elvis at 21 , organized by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service and Govinda Gallery, ends it’s run in Mobile, Alabama at the Mobile Museum of Fine Arts this Sunday, December 4th. It then opens on Christmas Eve at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Virginia. Some of Wertheimer’s best photographs of Elvis were taken in Richmond at the Mosque Theatre… the box set features a reproduction poster from the Mosque Theatre for an Elvis concert there on February 5th, 1956. This is a great Christmas gift for an Elvis fan.

Elvis PresleyYoung Man with the Big Beat box set.

Goodbye and Good Luck to Govinda Gallery

By Gary Tischler

We heard the news today, oh boy. Actually, we heard the news – that Govinda Gallery, Chris Murray’s singular sensation and creation would be closing its 34th Street site in Georgetown after 35 years – some time ago.
Murray made the announcement with a posting on Govinda’s website under the heading of “Govinda Gallery/The Omega Point,” complete with a black-and-white photograph of a (very) young Murray with hands-in-pocket, long-haired, sports-jacket-and-tie and I’m betting blue jeans and attitude.
The Omega Point is as described on the site ‘a term coined by the philosopher Pierre Teihard de Chardin to describe a maximum level of consciousness and complexity towards which the universe is evolving.”
There is nothing to say to that except this: that Govinda and Murray rocked, that Murray himself looks pretty much the same with something of the same attitude, and that time marches on and on and on, and that the gallery space is bare and empty, deserted like Woodstock without people.
Murray announced on the website “the opening of our new office dedicated to organizing and curating exhibitions for museums and other venues, the publishing of fine books, and continuing to assist and advise collectors of fine art.” Murray himself had of course graduated and shifted to many of these things already, including getting invloved in publishing limited edition coffee-table books of rock photography on the Rolling Stones, the Beatles and so on.
But the gallery will be gone, nothing to be done about that, and with it the march of 35 years of evolution, with a very, very, personal touch.
Govinda reflected Murray’s sensibility, his persona, his musical tastes, his lifestyles, and a sort of classy, eclectic collection of loved ones, family, friends, backers, acquaintances of note or not, artists, musicians, and writers. The smallish gallery is an accumulation of worlds, memories of noise and rock and roll, and of a one-of-a-kind opening receptions were you could run across Muhammad Ali, Annie Leibowitz, a Rolling Stone, Elvis on the wall, Donovan, and other artists of particular gifts. As time went on with repeated exhibitions of rock and pop photography, the results became accumulative. Govinda became something of a floating history of our national rock and pop culture with Murray acting as a kind of delighted promoter and ringmaster who brought something unique to that corner of Georgetown.
Govinda had style, it had cred and rep, it was manifestly fun and dripping with nostalgia as well as electric originality, a combination hard to beat and harder to find.
The last exhibition – “The Pure Drop,” a collection of drawings of Irish musicians at a national Irish music festival – was particularly characteristic of what both Murray and Govinda were all about. It was of course personal – Hester, an artist and school teacher, and Murray are married and the drawings come from a trip to Ireland the two made together – but it was also an exhibition of drawings which seemed mysteriously casual and intense all at once, another combination difficult to beat and find. It was also reflective of not only Hester’s work, but other artists Govinda showcased in its beginning as well as later – Kim Murray, Art Beatty, David Waters, Mati Klarwein, Christopher Makos and Howard Finster with his American Flag paintings.
Finally, “The Pure Drop” was musical and about music, tying the Govinda-Murray loose end together with work that had a great deal of affection in almost every line and had a preternatural touch of the Irish glowing from it. Because the drawings were done on the fly so to speak and in the moment unlike en plain sketch work, they had a casual, windy energy to the point that you practically were there, to feel the sun and the wind and hear the old sound and their newer variations. Hester would sit at performance sites which could be in the green, open summer air, at or inside a corner pub, or a nearby music stage and catch with swift lines people, notes, and times of a day on the fly. Not an easy thing to do; like trying to draw a bird in flight and get the details of wings and feathers.
Hester executed the drawings in County Cavan, Ireland in the summer of 2010 when she and Murray were at Fleadh Cheoil na hEireann, the largest of all traditional Irish music festivals. Hester roamed the festival, capturing street musicians, sessions, classes and dancers. Music is ,after all, about people, and she captured people like Catriona McKaye from Glasglow and her harp, Seamus and Gareth Tierny from Cavan on flute and button accordion; Catie Flynn and Aiofe Flynn on their banjo and button accordion; and scores of others.
The names, the place names, the music and the instruments appeared as all of a piece in Hester’s drawings, evocative as a village rising out of the green mist of Ireland.
“The Pure Drop” was a one of a kind exhibition, but in spirit, it resembled the gallery itself and almost everything that went on there. Murray, by the way of his interests and passions, and a keen appreciation of artists and rock and roll and every other thing that ended up in the gallery, created something unique and memory-lasting. He was a born promotor to the point that people who came passed the word on. There was nothing like the Govinda Gallery in Georgetown, not to mention the rest of Washington. He has in some ways made a rock and roll museum, floating, chimeric, but full of the documented sights and sounds of original American music.
He had help. His friends, of which there were many in number and eclectic in makeup, his family, the artists and painters, the photographers and the musicians, some of them famous, all of them keenly interesting.
The atmospheres at Govinda are gone. No doubt you’re drawn there at times automatically, thinking you’ve heard a blues note, seen an old time hurdy gurdy man holding forth. It’s not there anymore, but then again, in minds like mine, it always is.