Stories and Set Designs for The Sopranos ran from February 14 to May 31 at the Museum of the Moving Image.
There they all were. A wall of headshots, some favoring their characters—Christopher, Paulie, Big Pussy—and some, more startlingly, their actors. It was the first clue that the exhibition would return to a time—1997, let’s call it—before these were household faces. Edie Falco’s hair is down, flowing free of product; next to taut Carmela she is a flower child. James Gandolfini has enough hair for a side part! And who is that woman with gemlike eyes and the glamour of an opera star? Livia?!
Tucked into the Museum of the Moving Image’s narrow Amphitheater Gallery, the exhibition was a closed loop that kept coming back to two beginnings: to the entrance, those heraldic headshots; and to the pilot, the primal fabrication of that landscape long ripened in creator David Chase’s imagination. Convening location shots, concept drawings, photographs of the completed set, and episode clips, curator Barbara Miller aimed to show us how The Sopranos…
