NY exhibits featuring rare photos and mementos mark centennial of Frank Sinatra’s birth

NEW YORK, N.Y. – A couple of New York exhibits are paying homage to the centennial of Frank Sinatra’s birth by displaying rare photographs and mementos, many of them from the family archive.

“Sinatra: An American Icon” opens Wednesday at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. It will feature recordings, clothing, art and other personal items. Several new paintings of Sinatra by Peter Max are part of the exhibition. The show will travel to the GRAMMY Museum in Los Angeles after it closes Sept. 4.

Select photographs from the exhibition will also be on view during the International Festival of Arts & Ideas in June in New Haven, Connecticut.

Max will unveil all 27 of his new Sinatra works at his Manhattan studio on Monday. Sinatra’s daughter Nancy Sinatra is expected to attend.

“The Sinatra Experience” at Morrison Hotel Gallery SoHo, meanwhile, includes a selfie taken by a 23-year-old Sinatra in his Hoboken, New Jersey, bathroom mirror. Also on view will be photos by British photographer Terry O’Neill, who worked with Ol’ Blue Eyes for more than 30 years. The show runs from Thursday through March 26.

The GRAMMY Museum will present Sinatra centennial panel discussions throughout the year, including at Yale University and the University of Southern California.

A new multimedia stage production, “Sinatra,” is scheduled to open at the London Palladium in July.

Sinatra was born Dec. 12, 1915, and died at 82 in 1998.