A British invasion at Norfolk’s Chrysler Museum

This week, Beatles legend Sir Paul McCartney’s photography exhibit makes the second stop on its global magical mystery tour, with the show’s U.S. debut at the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk. Museum officials say attendance is expected to be higher than any previous exhibit at the 90-year-old Chrysler, with inquiries coming from across the country.

“Paul McCartney Photographs 1963-64: Eyes of the Storm,” an exhibition of about 250 photos and video footage taken by McCartney during the height of Beatlemania in late 1963 and early 1964, will open to the public at Chrysler on Thursday and run through April 7, 2024. The show’s world debut took place June through Oct. 1 at the National Portrait Gallery in London.

The exhibit’s three-month run in London drew more than 110,000 visitors, according to Sarah Brown, McCartney’s photographic curator and archivist. By comparison, 190,000 visitors toured the Chrysler during all of 2022.

Among the photos that will be on display are behind-the-scenes glimpses of McCartney and his bandmates — John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr — during three months of travels in the United Kingdom, the United States and France, as the four young musicians saw their fandom expand from their native England to the U.S. in February 1964, when they performed on “The Ed Sullivan Show” for two weeks to shrieking fans, ushering in the British Invasion to 73 million TV viewers.

Within months, their fame was worldwide, and the Beatles toured globally through 1966, when they abandoned the road for the studio, recording increasingly ambitious and innovative albums that included “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and “Abbey Road.” In 1970, the Beatles broke up and embarked on solo careers.

In November, McCartney’s pictures, which were in storage for nearly 60 years and had not previously been publicly displayed, landed in Norfolk, where they’ll remain through April 7. McCartney’s photographic curator and archivist, Sarah Brown, collaborated with Lloyd DeWitt, the Chrysler’s senior curator, on placement of the photos at the Norfolk museum, which opens the exhibit to the public Thursday. Members of the museum will have the chance Tuesday and Wednesday to catch a preview of the show, and members of the media toured the exhibit Monday.

McCartney’s photos — mainly in black and white until the band arrived in Miami in February 1964, when McCartney used color film to capture blue skies and the ocean — also show a snowy White House in Washington, D.C., teens chasing the Beatles’ car, portraits of police officers and a railroad worker, as well as fellow performers on their 1964 U.S. tour. A handful of McCartney’s photos chosen specifically for the U.S. exhibit show American artists that include Clarence “Frogman” Henry and Jackie DeShannon.

As for attendance expectations, “that is a million-dollar question,” said Erik Neil, Macon and Joan Brock director and president of the art museum. “We haven’t put on a show like this. But I expect that we will get tens of thousands. We’ve got interest from all over the country, like we never have [before], because of such widespread attention given to this material.” The museum ordered about 1,000 books depicting about 275 of McCartney’s photos.

The U.S. exhibit is timed to the 60th anniversary of the Beatles’ Sullivan appearances, and the Chrysler will host a special event Feb. 9, 2024, for museum members. According to Brown, McCartney personally chose music to be played at the event, and he also has curated five films to be screened on Wednesdays beginning Jan. 24, 2024, at the Naro Extended Cinema in Norfolk. The musician also had close oversight of the exhibit, choosing which photos to display and contributing quotes that describe the experience of the Beatles’ breakout in the U.S. DeWitt noted that because the photos hadn’t been displayed before this year, the prints were brand new and, in some cases, large enough to see details of large crowds gathered to see the band.

In 2020, McCartney rediscovered about 1,000 photos he had taken with a 35-millimeter camera while preparing for an exhibit of his late wife Linda McCartney’s photos.

Fixing a hole

So, how did the Chrysler get the gig, you may be asking? It was partly luck, Neil said. “We had an unusual opening, [a show] we had slotted in here [that] we had to push back for completely extraneous reasons,” Neil explained to Virginia Business. Casting about for a possible replacement, the McCartney exhibit “came across our desk,” Neil said. “Things opened up, and we said, ‘Oh yeah, that’s great. Let’s go get that.'”

McCartney’s representatives had reached out to the museum about a year ago, which is considered fairly late notice in the museum world, Neil noted, and the final contract was signed about six months ago. Usually special exhibits at larger museums are booked at least two years out, “or even further,” up to four years.

Even with the opening in its schedule, the Chrysler still needed to raise money to bring in the exhibit. Speaking in late November, Neil said he was still seeking donations and had not yet determined what the actual cost of the exhibit would be. “We will not know the exact cost of this exhibition until a lot of things are worked out … and [that] depends a little bit on what other venues there might be and what costs would be shared.”

McCartney, a committed vegetarian and environmental activist, placed some restrictions on the financial backing for the exhibit — including no sponsorships from fossil fuel companies, said Neil, who was able to get some past museum donors on board to help with costs, as well as assistance from the museum’s Horace W. Goldsmith Special Exhibitions Endowment. He declined to name individuals as he was still finalizing the sponsorships for the show, which will be free to all visitors. “That was one thing that I know was appealing to the McCartney team — that we are free,” Neil noted.

There’s no word whether Sir Paul will come to Norfolk during the exhibit’s stay. The 81-year-old musician is on tour in Brazil through Dec. 16, although he doesn’t have any dates for 2024 listed yet.

Neil, whose favorite Beatles song is “Blackbird,” says the museum has extended an invitation to McCartney. Hopefully Sir Paul can work it out.