Rock Star in All His Permutations

David Bowie Exhibition Opens at the Museum of Contemporary Art

Featured on nytimes.com

People who have doubts about the David Bowie exhibition opening at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago on Tuesday may find some misgivings soothed by the show’s ambitious catalog. It documents Mr. Bowie as a musical and performance pioneer whose means of visual expression included drawings, paintings and many shape-shifting, gender-bending ensembles — sometimes his own designs — for stage, cover art, videos and photos. Only about a third of the garments made the trip from the show’s point of origin, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. But they will include 11 for Ziggy Stardust, Mr. Bowie’s best-known character, and the Union Jack coat he collaborated on with Alexander McQueen. There will also be ephemera dating to Mr. Bowie’s childhood (he was born David Robert Jones in 1947) and examples of handwritten lyrics and projections of his most influential music videos. The material should convey Mr. Bowie’s wide-ranging achievement and also — as the museum’s news release says — repatriate him “into the territory of cutting-edge visual and performing art that is his natural home.”