Artists salute rock and roll.

Currently touring the nation is the first major traveling exhibition to document the widespread influences of rock and roll culture on contemporary art. Beginning with references to Elvis Presley, the Everly Brothers, and Bill Haley by pop artists of the 1950s and 1960s, it reveals an ongoing interaction between popular music and visual art, culminating with tributes to the late Kurt Cobain of Nirvana.

The exhibition includes more than 100 pieces of contemporary art created in a diverse array of media, including painting, collage, photographs, sculpture, and multi-media assemblies. Drawn from institutions and private collections, it represents a 40-year retrospective on how rock and roll has become a social force in art. Featured are works by many of the most important artists of the last half of the 20th century, including Laurie Anderson, Robert Arneson, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Annie Liebovitz, Robert Mapplethorpe, Nam June Paik, Robert Rauschenberg, Red Grooms, William Wegman, and Andy Warhol.

Rock and roll portraiture gained momentum in the 1970s and 1980s, as Warhol produced paintings and prints of pop starts such...