The 100th anniversary of Frank Sinatra’s birth does not come until Dec. 12, but the festivities are set to begin with exhibitions, symposiums, books, film screenings, recordings and concerts planned in cities all over the world.
In New York the multimedia exhibition “Sinatra: An American Icon” opens on March 4 at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. The exhibition, organized with the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles and the Sinatra family, will include rare concert and interview footage, personal correspondence, private photos, awards and other memorabilia, as well as music and film documents from the library. It runs through Sept. 4.
In connection with the exhibition the library will also offer Sinatra-related public programs and film screenings. On March 4 at 6 p.m., Bob Santelli, the executive director of the Grammy Museum, will discuss Sinatra’s career and influence with Nancy Sinatra, his daughter; Amanda Erlinger, his granddaughter; and the Sinatra historians Charles Pignone and Charles L. Granata. In October, Thames and Hudson will publish a commemorative photo album, “Sinatra 100,” by Mr. Pignone, the author of “Frank Sinatra: The Family Album” and “The Sinatra Treasures.”
“The Sinatra Experience,” which opens at the Morrison Hotel Gallery in SoHo on March 5, will show photographs from family albums, many of them never before seen, as well as photographs by Terry O’Neill, one of Sinatra’s best-known photographers.
The candid snaps from the family archives include a selfie from 1938 that Sinatra, wearing a fedora and giving himself a jaunty high sign, took by pointing his camera into a bathroom mirror in his apartment in Hoboken, N.J. It also includes a picture of Sinatra, taken by his wife, standing behind the microphone at the Rustic Cabin in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., where he was discovered. The exhibition runs through March 26.
A report in the “Arts, Briefly” column on Thursday about commemorations of the 100th anniversary of Frank Sinatra’s birth misstated the closing date of the exhibition “The Sinatra Experience” at the Morrison Hotel Gallery in Manhattan. It is March 26, not May 26.