Persistent, if often contradictory— thus described is the collective American identity of those who lived the imagined, re-imagined, unimaginable, sometimes nearly imaginary year of 1968. History gets told by the victors, perhaps accounting for multiple, often loud narratives still colliding over a lost war and in contemporary echoes of civil rights and liberation struggle, enduring pop culture tropes and more. Some of it arrives in still-startling visual documents assembled by the Minnesota Historical Society, and hosted locally by the Bowers Museum. This traveling show, prudently-named 'The 1968 Exhibit' offers many possible interpretations, with critics eager to argue. A picture, video or display not quite being worth a thousand words, maybe prepare by rereading Todd Gitlin’s The Sixties: Days of Hope, Years of Rage, an excellent complementary guide to this treasure of artifacts and fictions.
Tuesdays-Sundays. Starts: June 13. Continues through Sept. 13, 2015
