Exhibits & Events: A Month of Music (Art)
In conjunction with the Northampton Jazz Festival, R. Michelson Galleries is celebrating a MONTH OF MUSIC (Art). Music is a major inspiration for our artists and we have collected some of our best in a variety of media and styles.
September 5-30, 2025
Join us on Friday September 12, 2025 from 5-8pm for Jazz Arts Night Out . The Downtown Northampton Association and the Northampton Jazz Festival are partnering to bring small local jazz ensembles to perform at local businesses throughout downtown Northampton. Performing at R. Michelson Galleries will be Ian Behrstock on trumpet, Matthew Mueller on Piano, and Kai Caban on Bass.
For more information on the festival visit Northampton Jazz Festival.
Robert Wallace Selby
Robert returned to New England in 1976, where he wrote at the Boston Globe and Yankee Magazine before becoming the Providence Journal’s Staff Artist. In 1986, Selby began his teaching career with a weekly course at the Rhode Island School of Design. During his career in academia, he was a Fulbright Research Scholar in Madrid, Spain. Robert continued on to teach at Champlain College’s Game Art Program until 2015
Selby’s conceptual realist paintings, which feature distinctly American cultural revelations have shown across the country, including exhibits in New York, Detroit, and Washington, D.C. His newest series is based around Blues musicians.
Oil on wood,
24.5×43 in
18.5x12x8 in
8×6 in
8.5×7 i n
Marion Brown (1931-2010)
Jazz alto saxophonist, composer, writer, and visual artist was a member of the avant-garde jazz scene in New York City in the 1960’s playing with, among others, John Coltrane, Archie Shepp, and John Tchicai. He directed a lot of his creative energy in the 1980’s to his painting and drawing, exhibiting his work alongside artists such as Romare Bearden, Chalres Sealres, and Joe Overstreet.
24×18 in
17.5×14.25 in
15×17 in
14.5×11 in
Raul Colón
Raul’s 2014 project, Leontyne Price: Voice of a Century his picture book on the iconic opera singer, is brimming with color and passion. It shows Raul’s ability to make the sound visible. He continued to explore themes of music with two major non-illustration works, Adagio, and Beach Serenade.
13×20 in
13×20 in
13×20 in
13×20 in
32×42
Colored Pencil
30.5×37.5 in
Colored Pencil
Bryan Collier
Collier’s work brims with rhythm and music is a central theme in many of his children’s books as well as his independent creations. Two of the works below are from his book, Music is a Rainbow. Trombone Shorty was the initial cover for the book of the same name but the design was changed and another was used for the final publication.
24×30 in
12×9 in
10.75×7.75 in
21×20 in
Jack Coughlin (1932-2025)
Best known for his portraits of literary figures and musicians, Coughlin did two books of portraits of Blues and Jazz Musicians and performed locally with his own blues band. His work is in public and private collections internationally including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York and was a member of the National Academy of Design.
5.7 5x 5.5 in
6.25×8 in
5.25×6 in
5.5×6 in
5.75×5.5 in
Ernesto Montenegro
Ernesto did a series of works in bronze on themes of jazz and music, illustrating the ebb and flow of the music with the varying patterns of relief. He described the works like walking into a smoky jazz club and hearing parts of a composition here and there and having it all come together as you get closer and it all comes into focus.
22x33x7.5 in
Bronze
15×26 in
Bronze
Brian Pinkney
Caldecott Award-winning illustrator Brian Pinkney did several books on music, one being his 2002 biopic picture book, Ella Fitzgerald – The Tale of a Vocal Virtuoso.
11×19 in
11.5×19.5 in
11.5×19.5 in
11.5×19.5 in
Mordicai Gerstein (1935-2019)
Mordicai did a number of books using sound and music as subjects but What Charlie Heard, his biography on the American composer Charles Ives was noteworthy in the way he made the sounds visual. Publisher’s Weekly described it as ” Gerstein creates a rousing visual cacophony that echoes Ives’s compositions in this inspired picture-book biography.”
10×22 in
10×11 in
9.75×21.75 in
10×22 in
10×11 in
E. B. Lewis
Many of E. B. Lewis’ books centered around music, notably in his 2005 project with Richard Michelson, Happy Feet but also in his 1998 Jazz of Our Street
15.5×11.5 in
from Jazz of Our Street
9×13.5 in
from Happy Feet
14×23 in
from Across the Alley
12.5×12.5 in
Matthew Cordell
Caldecott Medal winner Matthew Cordell knows how to rock as shown in his 2018 book, Rock ‘n’ Roll Soul.
9×7 in
12×18.5 in
9×7.5 in
9×7 in
John Stritch (1925-2014)
John was a master of design. He worked in many mediums, painting and sculpture, doing doing bold abstract compositions, but he is perhaps best known for the posters he would design for Tanglewood, the music venue in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts.
26×40 in
44×35 in
38×25 in
40×26 in
Other Artists
by Ekua Holmes
24×24 in
by John Lennon
39×30 in
by Zachary Ehrenreich
20×28.5 in
by Gregory Stone
20.25×18 in