Collectively curated by graduate students in the department’s World on Fire: 1968/Now class in the 2018 Fall semester, the exhibition at John. M Flaxman Library observes and articulates the late 1960s’ global turbulences from a more intimate perspective — the items featured, including ceremonial pins, hip-hop CD-ROMs, the used passport, the specially designed tote bag, and a couple of differently-themed books, are mostly picked from the private collections of the students and their family members.
Streaming through the diverse cultural contexts and complicated social realities around late 1960s, some tiny sections of each exhibitor’s life history and culture interests are clustered in objects which carry flowing memories and current visions at the same time. As awareness of historical happenings passed over generations, this show invites visitors to enjoy a vivid representation of “senses of the era”, as well as reflect on their own cultural, social, and political trajectories.
This exhibition is in conjunction with the class: World on Fire: 1968/Now, a special-devised, year-long lecture series featured by Art History, Theory, and Criticism Department. Examining the intersections of art, design and politics of 1968 with iconic global events, which both stay within and step out of the art context, this class welcomes everyone who is interested in the connections between historical and current international society, as well as the complicated meaning behind what we naturally call “the contemporary”.
