Bob Dylan's Got a Major Art Exhibit in London

The National Portrait Gallery in London announced Monday that it will house Bob Dylan's latest art exhibit, a collection of portraits that “represent characters, with an amalgamation of features Dylan has collected from life, memory and his imagination and fashioned into people, some real and some fictitious.”

The National Portrait Gallery in London announced Monday that it will house Bob Dylan's latest art exhibit, a collection of portraits that “represent characters, with an amalgamation of features Dylan has collected from life, memory and his imagination and fashioned into people, some real and some fictitious.”

Dylan's new collection is a series of 12 pastel portraits. The exhibit, which opens on August 24, has been two years in the making, and it apparently grew out of Dylan's affinity for the Gallery. It will be the first time his artwork is shown on this scale in Great Britain.

Whether these portraits will actually be taken from other people's photographs remains to be seen. Dylan was accused of painting plagiarism in 2011, when it was discovered that a group of paintings he claimed to be inspired by his travels in Asia closely resembled other's photographs of the region. 

The 72-year-old singer-songwriter is also releasing a reboot of his 1970 album Self Portrait, aptly called Another Self Portrait. The new album will feature outtakes and live recordings from the years 1969-1971. Dylan also created a portrait for the album cover. Reviews aren't in yet — hopefully they'll be better than Greil Marcus's notorious Rolling Stone review of Self Portrait, which began, "what is this shit?"