1000 Museums

One of 1000Museums/ArtAuthority four partners, R. Mac Holbert, prior to the founding of our company, had a storied life working for many of the biggest bands of the seventies including Crosby, Stills & Nash, America, Carole King, Poco, and Peter, Paul and Mary.

In 1967 he attended the Monterey Pop Festival where Jim Hendrix lit his Stratocaster guitar on fire, a legendary event from which Joni Mitchell would later draw inspiration for her painting, Jimi.

While attending the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1969 Mac and a friend drove to Los Angeles to see one of his favorite artists, Dave Van Ronk, open for Joni. Van Ronk’s performance was enjoyable but Joni’s performance was absolutely brilliant and Mac became a life-long fan.

In 1971 Mac joined the Crosby, Stills & Nash road crew, and he was introduced to Joni at a party at Graham Nash’s home to kick off the tour. Through the years they would run into each other at various shows and events.

Nash would go on to found Nash Editions in 1991 with Mac and others, it is considered the first fine art digital printmaking studio. Mac remembers the first time he worked with Joni there. She had just returned from a tour and found that her TV reception was jumbled and was creating spectacular abstract images. These intrigued her so much that she photographed them using a disposable camera. When she received the film she asked Mac to enlarge and print the images for her. As she has said, “I am a painter first, and a musician second.”

Early in 2022 Mac received a phone call from an old friend, Marcy Gensic, Joni’s long-time personal assistant. When Joni broached the subject of getting prints made of her Jimi painting, Mac's name immediately came up. A zoom call later and as Joni wrote in The Circle Game, “there’ll be new dreams, maybe better dreams, and plenty / Before the last revolving year is through.”  Mac suggested that the painting be scanned by the high-end services of ArtScans run by David Coons. Mac received the scan and created the first proof which according to Marcy completely “blew her away”!

1000Museums/ArtAuthority is honored to work with Joni Mitchell, one of the most brilliant and legendary artists of our time.