The Jazz Heritage Center’s Koret Heritage Lobby---the main public lobby of the Fillmore Heritage Center outside the entrance to Yoshi’s jazz club and restaurant--- showcases special local and traveling exhibits focused on jazz history and culture, with a particular emphasis on the contribution of San Francisco to the history of jazz. In addition, the lobby will host interactive and traditional exhibits focused on the unique history of the Fillmore neighborhood, a district rich in diversity and cultures that has served as the heart of San Francisco’s African-American population for over fifty years.

Current Exhibitions

The Jazz Heritage Center is pleased to present its second major lobby exhibition, Jam Session: America’s Jazz Ambassadors Embrace the World. This special show marks the Jazz Heritage Center’s first exhibit focused on the role of jazz in American history, a critical part of the organization’s mission.

Originally organized by the Meridian International Center in Washington DC, this exceptional collection of photographs and documents drawn from important archives around the country chronicles the tours of American jazz legends as they traveled the globe on behalf of the U.S. State Department from the mid-1950s through the 1970s. During these tours, Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, Dave Brubeck, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Sarah Vaughn and others served as cultural diplomats, transcending national boundaries, and making friends for the U.S.

The exhibit includes nearly 100 compelling images of American musicians visiting 35 countries in four continents. Between the 1950s and 1970s, these charismatic artists inspired millions of concert-goers worldwide with exceptional performances of this unique American art form called jazz. The exhibit illustrates the ways in which this innovative approach to cultural diplomacy helped the United States share its message successfully – often in moments critical to American foreign policy. The exhibit will educate and enlighten viewers about this important historical initiative, while emphasizing the value of employing the arts to further international and intercultural understanding.

The exhibit has been curated by Dr. Curtis Sandberg, Meridian’s Vice President for the Arts, together with Professor Penny M. Von Eschen, an expert in the history of jazz diplomacy and author of Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War. The exhibit opened in Meridian’s Washington DC galleries in April 2008 and is now on an international tour, including recent stops at Jazz at Lincoln Center, and future stops at the American Jazz Museum in Kansas City, the Louisiana State Museum in New Orleans, and several sites worldwide. The New York Times provided a glowing overview of the exhibit here

As part of the Jam Session exhibit, the Jazz Heritage Center’s Lush Life Gallery is showing a special collection of paintings of many of the jazz ambassadors, including images of Louis Armstrong, Dave Brubeck, Dizzy Gillespie, and Quincy Jones.

Locally, The Jazz Heritage Center is partnering with the World Affairs Council and Business for Diplomatic Action on the exhibit.)

CREDITS: Home page photo: Louis Armstrong entertains children at the Tahhseen Al-Sahha Medical Center. Cairo, Egypt, 1961, Courtesy of the Louis Armstrong House Museum; Above, Dizzy Gillespie with Yugoslav musician and composer Nikica Kalogjera and fans. Zagreb, Yugoslavia, 1956, Courtesy of the Marshall Stearns Collection, Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University; Clark Terry and his Jolly Giants in concert. Karachi, Pakistan, 1978, Courtesy of Special Collections, University of Arkansas Libraries, Fayetteville; Benny Goodman performs for a young audience in Red Square. Moscow, Soviet Union, 1962, Courtesy of the Irving S. Gilmore Music Library, Benny Goodman.