Get ready to rock
Eric von Schmidt, Joan Baez and Bob Dylan – East Coast Tour, 1965. Screenprint on paper, 54.6 x 33.1 cm. Gift of the Donald R. Muller/Ross R. Scott Collection, 2010. (2010/128) © Estate of Eric von Schmidt.
Step into this temporary exhibit of classic 1960s music posters and you’ll instantly travel back to groovier times.
Titled Rise of the Rock Poster: San Francisco in the 1960s, this exhibition of 35 rock posters features some very recognizable names: Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, The Doors and more. And almost all the posters are from 1967, a.k.a. the Summer of Love, and San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district, celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. These posters, which promoted music events and artists (there were often three to five concerts happening every night in the Bay Area in the '60s – that’s a lot of posters!), act as snapshots of the era's style, interests, politics, fashion and youth culture.
The AGO’s Assistant Curator of Prints and Drawings, Alexa Greist, recently shared more about the exhibition on our Facebook page. Watch the video:
Works on paper can only be exposed to light for limited periods of time, so Rise of the Rock Poster: San Francisco in the 1960s will only be on display until for a few months – the current posters will come down on November 19, and after two weeks of installation a new crop from the collection will go up in their place. You may have missed the concerts, but you don’t have to miss this show. You can even hear Alexa speak about the exhibition in person on September 8 at 6 pm, in her talk Close Encounters: The Rise of the Rock Poster and the Summer of Love.
Stay tuned – this gallery space is now dedicated to highlighting the best of the AGO’s prints and drawings collection, so look forward to more all-star exhibitions!
Rise of the Rock Poster: San Francisco in the 1960s is included in general admission, and AGO Members see it free.
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