Voices of Counterculture in the Southwest

At a time when concerts and gatherings on the West Coast gave birth to 1967’s infamous “Summer of Love,” New Mexico was experiencing its own social and environmental revolution depicted in Voices of Counterculture in the Southwest, an exhibition coming to the New Mexico History Museum in Santa Fe this May. As the Vietnam conflict dragged on for more than a decade, and the trajectory of civil rights activism escalated nationally, issues of justice, identity and social norms sparked activism among the nation’s youth. Young people from across the country flocked to alternative living situations in growing communes or organized to fight social and political injustices. From the mid-1960s into the 1970s, the well-known draw of New Mexico’s open skies and cross-cultural environment sparked a pilgrimage of many young people to the area.

Opening at the History Museum on May 14, 2017 and running through February 11, 2018, the exhibition spans the decades of the 60s and 70s exploring this influx of young people to New Mexico and the subsequent collision of cultures. Through archival footage, oral histories, photography, ephemera and artifacts, the exhibition examines this cultural revolution and asks how these forms of rebellion inform the ways we think about contemporary social and political questions of what it means to be an engaged citizen.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.