You Say you Want a Revolution: Records and Rebels 1966-70 (c) Victoria & Albert Museum, London
London’s Victoria and Albert Museum is presenting a major exhibition that explores the era-defining significance and impact of the late 1960s. You Say You Want a Revolution? Records and Rebels 1966 – 70, which opens Friday, September 16 and continues through February 26, 2017 will, per the announcement, “investigate the upheaval, the explosive sense of freedom, and the legal changes that took place resulting in a fundamental shift in the mindset of the Western world.”
The museum notes: “More than 350 objects encompassing photography, posters, literature, music, design, film, fashion, artefacts, and performance that defined the counterculture will illustrate the way that a whole generation shook off the confines of the past and their parents, radically revolutionising the way they lived their lives.”
John Sebastian at the 1969 Woodstock Festival © Henry Diltz Corbis
Classic rock items on display include the suits worn by John Lennon and George Harrison on the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and handwritten lyrics for “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”; shards from Jimi Hendrix’s guitar; and a stage costume for Mick Jagger from designer Ossie Clark. Other cultural and historical items include a moon rock on loan from NASA alongside the space suit worn by William Anders, who took the defining ‘Earthrise’ photograph on the Apollo 8 mission; and a rare Apple 1 computer.
Advance tickets for the exhibit are available here. The system allows visitors to book a specific date and time.
Martin Roth, Director of the V&A, says: “This ambitious framing of late 1960s counterculture shows the incredible importance of that revolutionary period to our lives today. This seminal exhibition will shed new light on the wide-reaching social, cultural and intellectual changes of the late 1960s which followed the austerity of the post-war years throughout the Western world.”
Anti-Vietnam demonstrators at the Pentagon Building, 1967. Photo: Bernie Boston, Washington Post via Getty Images and the V&A Museum
Objects are drawn from the breadth of the V&A’s varied collections, alongside important loans to highlight connections between people, places, music and movements across the U.K., Europe and the U.S. The exhibition will focus on particular environments that defined the cultural and social vanguard of the period, including Carnaby Street in London, clubs and counterculture, the Paris protests of May 1968, World Fairs including Montreal and Osaka, the Woodstock Festival of 1969 and alternative communities on the U.S. west coast.
The exhibit will also showcase the collection of BBC Radio host and musical tastemaker John Peel, providing, says the announcement, “an odyssey through some of the greatest music and performances of the 20th century from Sam Cooke’s ‘A Change is Gonna Come’ to The Who’s ‘My Generation’ to Jimi Hendrix live at Woodstock.”
Music will be played through Sennheiser headsets using innovative audio guide technology which adapts the sound to the visitor’s position in the gallery. Sound will be integrated with video and moving image, including interviews with key figures from the period including Yoko Ono and Twiggy, psychedelic light shows and seminal films including Easy Rider and 2001: A Space Odyssey to create a fully immersive and dramatic audiovisual experience.
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