Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia, 1964–1974

Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN
October 24, 2015 – February 28, 2016

Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI
June 19 – October 9, 2016

Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA
February 8 –May 21, 2017

Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia, 1964-1974 (2015), was a landmark seven-year research project to recuperate the marginalized and erased histories of the art, architecture, and design of the counterculture in the U.S., culminating in a 448-page catalogue and a 14,000 square foot traveling exhibition featuring multiple immersive environments. Curatorial assistance from Anna Renken, Emmet Byrne, and Jordan Carter.

Ken Issac's The Knowledge Box (1962/2015). A room-sized chamber immerses visitors in an array of images and music.

Helen Mayer Harrison's and Newton Harrison's Portable Orchard (1972/2015), citrus trees grown under artificial lighting, a project of their Survival Series.

The Ultimate Painting, a participatory work displayed under stroboscopic lighting and inside a zome structure created by the artists and founding members of the Drop City commune in 1966.

Ant Farm's Media Van (1971) recreated as a sculpture in 2008, featuring videos from the original's Truckstop Network project of the 1970s.

Inspired by the design of the People's Yellow Pages of the Bay Area (c. early 1970s); four-color "ads" for certain projects represented in the exhibition were scattered throughout catalogue essays designed in collaboration with Emmet Byrne.

Essays explore concepts such as aesthetic radicalism; pneumatic temporalities; Italian radical design; ideologies of "free"; early encounters with computing technologies and network culture; and the relationship between the Black Panthers and the Diggers, among other topics.