3. David Bowie Is Exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum

Photograph from the album cover shoot for Aladdin Sane, 1973. Photo Duffy © Duffy Archive & The David Bowie Archive

The traveling exhibit David Bowie Is, currently located at the Brooklyn Museum, is a tour de force that explores the life and influences of Bowie through an extraordinary collection of items predominantly from the David Bowie Archive. Iconic costumes, personal diaries, photographs, sketches, instruments, film, and more come together visually, while audio — Bowie’s songs, voice recordings of Bowie talking about himself, audio from projected films — is played over the headphones you wear, coordinated with the exhibit as you walk through.

David Bowie Is opens with context on Bowie’s life growing up in south London and the suburbs around the city, and his first ventures into the avant- garde scene in London. Then, we witness his first steps into the limelight, transforming from David Jones to David Bowie by 1965. Read more about the exhibition here.