Relive the heady days of the late 1960s with "Revolution"
The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) is proud to welcome the exhibition REVOLUTION: “YOU SAY YOU WANT A REVOLUTION” presented by BMO Financial Group, from June 17 to October 8, 2017. After the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London, where it is currently enjoying great success, the MMFA will offer its own version and layout of this immersive exhibition, which takes visitors on a trip through time, exploring the ideals of the late 1960s as expressed in music, film, fashion and design, as well as through activism.
REVOLUTION explores the context for the transformations in Western society, driven by young people with a deep desire for change and freedom. From Flower Power to the Black Panthers, miniskirts to the first man on the moon, Expo 67 to Woodstock, it recreates the cultural, social, artistic and technological “explosion” that occurred between 1966 and 1970, the repercussions of which are still being felt today.
The exhibition includes more than 350 objects – clothes, posters, albums, photographs and numerous archival documents – that paint a portrait of the lifestyles, dreams and demands of an optimistic generation of activists and pacifists who wanted to break with the values of the past. It looks at the consumer society, protests against the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, the sexual revolution, experimentation with LSD, concerts and communal living and the environmentalism.
“Revolution transports us to the 1960s without resorting to a time machine, through the fashions, music, design, technologies and demands of the era. It’s a kaleidoscope of sights and sounds – and for me, as a baby boomer– a look back at an exciting time that was both joyful and rebellious, as the whole world was being reinvented,” added Diane Charbonneau, co-curator of the exhibition in Montreal, and Curator of Modern and Contemporary Decorative Arts, and Photography at the MMFA.
REVOLUTION is a musical odyssey through the great musical performances of the twentieth century – from the Beatles to Jimi Hendrix – accompanied by interviews with iconic figures (Yoko Ono, Twiggy…) and excerpts from seminal films. Visitors will enjoy an immersive musical experience with high-fidelity headphones that synchronize the sounds and images according to their location in the galleries.
There will also be a special focus on Montreal’s Expo 67, which will be celebrating its fiftieth anniversary in 2017. The MMFA’s presentation will spotlight this milestone event, which marked the beginning of Quebec’s greater openness to the world and provided an outstanding showcase for the technological advances of the time. Expo 67, with its theme “Man and His World”, welcomed more than 50 million visitors, the highest attendance for any world’s fair in the twentieth century.
REVOLUTION: “YOU SAY YOU WANT A REVOLUTION” is organized by the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
