Los Angeles – It is not often that a museum exhibition looks like a diorama animated by a life – transporting viewers outside themselves and in the world of another. Alice Coltrane, Eternal Monument At Hammer Museum, organized by Erin Christovale, creates a gently pulsed orb which expands far from the kingdom of a typical exhibition. He explores the heritage of the musician and spiritual leader Alice Coltrane, guiding museum lovers far from everyday life and in a fresh trance. You are changed and improved.
For those who are not accessible to Alice Coltrane (née McLeod), in short, she was born in 1937 into a musical family in Detroit. She became an extremely adept at the piano and was supervised by the legendary jazz pianist Bud Powell. In 1965, she married the renowned saxophonist John Coltrane, with whom she had three boys, in addition to her daughter from a previous marriage. After the death of Coltrane in 1967, she opened and directed the Ashram of Sai Anantam, dedicated to spiritual practice and religious education, in Agoura Hills, near Los Angeles, where she became a Swamini known by her adopted Sanskrit name, Turiyasangitananda, meaning “the highest transcendental song of the Lord”. She continued to record music, released 20 albums before her death in 2007. Although a strong pianist and multi-instrumentalist, Coltrane, the most venerated for her spiritual-jazz harp. Her first harp was a gift from her husband who arrived after her death, which he probably intended to watch her open. Although this has never happened, the world has appreciated its gift for decades.
In 2022, the Hammer Museum set up an exhibition dedicated to another famous female figure not easily associated with the visual arts, Joan Didion. Where this show appeared as a disjointed tribute to the geographic links of the deceased author with various regions, Eternal monument Feels incredibly consistent and complete. Visitors discover Coltrane and her musical heritage, as well as her links with Los Angeles, but they are invited to consider the experience of living as her, thinking like her and devoting themselves to spiritual growth. The exhibition is responsible for a soothing and exploratory energy – the same essence which is sought in divine spirituality. The music integrated through the functions not as a background but as a way to punctuate and amplify the planned message of the conservative, as in the musical practice of Coltrane.
The exhibition circulates through three themes: Sonic Innovation, on the musical influence and the heritage of Coltrane; Spiritual transcendence, in his journey to illumination; and architectural intimacy, on its penchant for the world and the community building. The three sections are presented in the three sections, many of which commissioned for the show, of 19 contemporary American artists who were all affected by his life and his work.
In “Blue Nile (Cosmogram # 2)” by Adee Roberson (2024), visitors are welcomed to stand at the top of a selenite cosmogram platform while a suspended speaker was a soundtrack aligned on different chakras. The own sketches of deities of Coltrane, Rama and Krishna, are also devoted, and the “44.6 pounds” by Gozié Ojini (2024) welcome the public with deconstructs and disappeared – deceased? – Pianos, installed as if it were floating on a wall or in cascade on the floor. Nicole Miller's Laser RVB Laser animation display “For Turiya” (2024), a tribute to the name adopted by Coltrane, flanks the subtle entrance to a small piece housing the landscape of Steven Ellison (Aka Flying Lotus) “Untitled” (2025), a country of sounds created for the exhibition which incorporates Coltrane Coltrane cassettes on Sunday. Ellison's is a serene and isolated space for reflection. A rectangle of cushions is surrounded by speakers and saturated in the deep orange which crosses the exhibition and its support book – A nod to the shade of the clothes of many spiritual leaders, including the one that Coltrane wore almost exclusively in his last years.
The title, Eternal monumentTaken from a book written by Coltrane in 1977, is an appropriate reflection of the exposure forces. He feels less about Coltrane herself and more of the undulations of a cautious intention that she pushed. He honors his subject and the invincible strength of his creations, but he pays much more remarkable homage to art as an eternal monument. The spectacle depicts the pursuit and experience of art, and its necessity in the human condition, not only as a form of self -expression but also as an expression of belief in the power of the divine – art as a demonstration of humility, an arc against infinity. Coltrane's life illustrates the clever life at the service of something undoubtedly good.
Accompanying the exhibition is a series of performances entitled Turiya Rising, in which various musicians, some with works in the show, occur on a stage of the gallery manufactured by Geovanna Gonzales (“under the sun is the eye of Wisdom”, 2024). When I attended a performance, the public was suffocated and attentive. The musician, Harpist Mary Lattimore, played surrounded on three sides by the public. From my point of view, a giant portrait of the size of a Coltrane wall looked, his eyes apparently moving from the public to Lattimore with a smile from Mona Lisa. These performances emphasize the gallery as a space for reflection and exaltation as much as visualization, focusing an art form in which we are invited to close our eyes and to feel. More than during the hours of normal vision, the series – with Coltrane's daughter, singer Michelle Coltrane, the harpists Brandee Younger and Lattimore, and artistic exhibited Jasper Marsalis (Aka Slauson Malone 1), among others – actively use the gallery as a sound manager, and seems to bend the time to reach Coltrane through the mediums and the years. The lettering in vinyl behind the performers, visible between photography and sketch of Martine Syms, underlines the feeling of the exhibition as a whole: “Mandeuse us from the Réléal to the real.”
Alice Coltrane, Eternal Monument Continue to Hammer Museum (10899 Wilshire Boulevard, Westwood, Los Angeles) until May 4. The exhibition was organized by Erin Christovale with Nyah Ginwright, conservative assistant.
