During the 1960s and 1970s, Chicago was shaped by art and ideas produced and circulated on the South Side.
Yet the history of the period's creative and social ferment has often remained segregated by the city's social, political, and geographic divides. This exhibition—co-organized by the DuSable Museum of African American History and the Smart Museum of Art and presented at both institutions concurrently—takes the first integrated look at the cultural history of Chicago’s South Side during this momentous era of change and conflict.
It aims to upend dominant narratives of the period, and to unearth rich stories by examining watershed cultural moments from the Hairy Who to the Wall of Respect, from the Civil Rights movement to the Blackstone Rangers, from vivid protest posters to visionary outsider art, and from the Free University movement to the radical jazz of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians.
Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website