Harry Smith & the Alchemy of Abstraction Featuring Devandra Banhart & Friends Live!

7^th House at the Philosophical Research Society, the Harry Smith Archive, and Los Angeles Filmforum present

Harry Smith & the Alchemy of Abstraction

Featuring Devandra Banhart & Friends Live!

Opening event of The Cosmic Collage of Harry Smith

Saturday April 25, 2026, 7:30 pm

At the Philosophical Research Society, 3910 Los Feliz Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90027

Full info: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/harry-smiths-alchemical-abstractions-feat-devendra-banhart-live-tickets-1987101480018

Tickets: $25 plus fees

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/harry-smiths-alchemical-abstractions-feat-devendra-banhart-live-tickets-1987101480018

Sorry, due to the cost with the musicians, there are no free Filmforum member tickets for this program.

Join us for the opening night of The Philosophical Research Society and the Harry Smith Archive’s long-awaited series, THE COSMIC COLLAGE OF HARRY SMITH with HARRY SMITH & THE ALCHEMY OF ABSTRACTION—a one-night event offering an immersive, in-depth journey into the work of one of the most singular figures of the American avant-garde, culminating in a live performance by the acclaimed, genre-defying musician and visual artist Devendra Banhart and friends. 

In this one-night event, Rani Singh—renowned Smith scholar and Director of the Harry Smith Archive—serves as our guide through the life, work, and cosmology of Harry Everett Smith: artist, filmmaker, folklorist, collector, proto-psychedelic progenitor, and self-described alchemist of culture. In a presentation blending film, audio, and live narration, Singh leads us through a constellation of materials that illuminate Smith’s expansive creative universe and the many threads that run through it, including his deep engagement with esoteric practice and belief. 

The night culminates in a program of Smith’s films, including his landmark EARLY ABSTRACTIONS (1946–1957) presented in full, alongside rarely seen works such as the UNTITLED SEMINOLE PATCHWORK FILM and archival footage offering a rare glimpse of Smith himself—presented with live musical accompaniment by Devendra Banhart and friends Dory Bavarsky, Griffin Kisner, Dave Longstreth, and John Moods who will perform an original score in dialogue with Smith’s work. 

Part screening, part performance, part tour-guided exploration, this opening event offers an unforgettable opportunity to encounter Harry Smith’s work as a vibrant, eternally reverberant constellation of images, sounds, and ideas. 

Rani Singh is Director of the Harry Smith Archives. She met Harry Smith at Naropa Institute and was his assistant until his passing in 1991 when she initiated the Harry Smith Archives dedicated to the location, preservation and presentation of the work of Harry Smith. Invited as scholar in residence at the Getty Research Institute based on her work on Smith, she held long tenure at the Getty Research Institute, where she led research driven initiatives including Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945–1980.

Singh was responsible for the placement of the Harry Smith Papers at the Getty Research Institute and the acquisition by the Bob Dylan Center, Tulsa, Oklahoma of Smith’s books and records. She also co-curated “Fragments of a Faith Forgotten: The Art of Harry Smith” presented by the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2023 – 2024.  Based in Santa Monica, Singh is an art consultant and appraiser specializing in strategic planning and legacy management for artist’s estates and foundations. She is currently curating an exhibition on Harry Smith for the Bob Dylan Center, opening summer 2027.

Devendra Banhart (b. 1980, Houston, Texas) lives and works in Los Angeles. He was born Devendra Obi Banhart in Houston, Texas, but spent his childhood in Caracas, Venezuela; as a teenager, his family returned to the States, relocating in Southern California.

An internationally renowned musician, songwriter, and visual artist considered a pioneer of the “freak folk” and “New Weird America” movements, Banhart has toured, performed, and collaborated with Vashti Bunyan, Yoko Ono, Os Mutantes, the Swans, ANOHNI, Caetano Veloso, and Beck, amongst many others. His musical work has always existed symbiotically alongside his pursuits in the other fine arts. He has released 12 full length albums, been nominated for a Grammy, has released one book of poetry with Featherproof Press.

His visual art has been presented across some of the most respected museums and galleries around the world. Exhibitions include Offering Cloud of Scattered Genitalia, Serralves Museum, Porto, PT; The Grief I Have Caused You, Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, Ca (2022); Other Flowers, Hauser and Wirth, Los Angeles, Ca (2019); Voglio proprio vedere, Mazzoli, Modena, Italy (2017); Sphinx Interiors & Other Works, Mazzoli, Modena, Italy (2014, solo); Abstract Rhythms: Paul Klee and Devendra Banhart, SFMoMA, San Francisco (2007–2008); Music is a Better Noise, MoMA PS1, Queens, New York (2007); and Devendra Banhart, Mazzoli, Modena, Italy (2006, solo). His monograph of drawings and paintings I Left My Noodle on Ramen Street (2015, Prestel) features essays by Jeffrey Deitch and Beck.

------

In celebration of what would have been his 103rd solar return, The Philosophical Research Society is proud to present THE COSMIC COLLAGE OF HARRY SMITH, a series dedicated to the boundless, unruly imagination of Harry Everett Smith—artist, filmmaker, folklorist, collector, and self-described alchemist of culture—co-presented and co-curated by the Harry Smith Archive, and presented in collaboration with 7th House, Los Angeles Filmforum, The American Museum of Paramusicology, The Getty Research Institute, Zebulon, and 2220 Arts + Archives.

A singular figure of the American avant-garde, Smith moved fluidly between disciplines and identities, assembling a body of work that resists containment. From his hand-painted and cut-out animation films—whose vivid abstractions and visionary logic would prove foundational to the development of psychedelic art—to his groundbreaking Anthology of American Folk Music—a meticulously curated, deeply idiosyncratic collection of early American recordings that would go on to inspire the folk revival of the 1960s and shape generations of musicians beyond—from ethnographic recordings to vast personal archives of string figures, paper airplanes, and occult diagrams, Smith approached the world as something to be gathered, transformed, and re-enchanted. His practice was not simply interdisciplinary—it was cosmological.

Deeply engaged with esoteric traditions, mysticism, and systems of hidden knowledge, Smith understood art-making as a form of spiritual inquiry. Alchemical thought, Kabbalah, and ritual practice were not peripheral interests but central frameworks through which he interpreted sound, image, and pattern. Across his work, correspondences emerge: between music and geometry, folklore and magic, the everyday and the divine.

Bringing together film screenings, an art exhibit, live musical performances, panel discussions, artist presentations, an online class, and a special visit to the Getty Research Institute’s Harry Smith collection, this series traces Smith’s expansive creative universe, reflecting both the breadth of his output and the coherence of his vision. Join us as we investigate and celebrate Smith’s remarkable life and works, where disciplines dissolve, curation becomes creation, and art serves as a bridge between the material and the unseen.

PROGRAM:

4/25 — Harry Smith’s Alchemical Abstractions + live performance by Devendra Banhart (Opening Night) – featuring EARLY ABSTRACTIONS (1939–56) screening — co-presented by 7th House & Los Angeles Filmforum

5/7 — Brain Drawings: The Art of Harry Smith (Exhibition Opening) in The Philosophical Research Society's Hansell Gallery

5/7 — Mind Maps: Exploring Harry Smith’s Hermetic Allusions – Panel Discussion w/ David Orr, William Kiesel, Jessica Hundley and Chuck Stein

5/21 — Adam Green Explains Harry Smith + HEAVEN & EARTH MAGIC (1957) screening — Adam Green in person! — co-presented by 7th House & Los Angeles Filmforum

5/24 — Harry Smith’s Anthology as a Magical Instrument presented by Matt Marble of The American Museum of Paramusicology (Online Presentation)

5/29 — Show & Tell: Harry Smith Archive at the Getty Research Institute

5/29 — Celebration of Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music at Zebulon

5/31 — MAHAGONNY (1980) screening at 2220 Arts + Archives — co-presented by Los Angeles Filmforum and 7^th House.