Press release 50 years since the Summer of Love – Museum Folkwang to feature largest exhibition of posters from the hippy movement ever held in Europe Essen, 8 June 2017 – The 1967 Summer of Love in San Francisco represented the high- water mark of the hippy movement. On the event’s 50th anniversary, this summer the Museum Folkwang will be holding a comprehensive exhibition dedicated to hippy culture. Approximately 250 psychedelic posters – complemented by photographs, album covers, and concert tickets – will provide a comprehensive look back at this important period of upheaval. San Francisco 1967 (on view 9 June – 3 September 2017) is the largest poster exhibition on the Summer of Love ever to be held anywhere in Europe. Against the backdrop of serious racial unrest, the Vietnam War, and a consumerist-driven society, there emerged in the San Francisco of the 1960s a counterculture that strove to find new ways for people and countries to co-exist. As well as the hippies’ signature style of dress, it was most of all the music of Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead, The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, and Janis Joplin that lent expression to the movement. Posters served to recruit more people to the hippies’ way of thinking. This exhibition explores the psychedelic poster – the groundbreaking visual legacy from the years around 1967. The exhibition will feature 246 posters, complemented by playbills, concert tickets, album covers, plus the sound effects and the installation used in an original Joshua Light Show from 1967. Themes covered in the exhibition will put a spotlight on the Vietnam War, music culture, the civil rights movement, sexual liberation, and everyday culture. Within a very short period, artists succeeded in creating a completely new style: European art was among the sources of inspiration for the movement, which drew upon elements of Art Nouveau and the Vienna Secession. Furthermore, renowned poster artists and designers like Victor Moscoso, Bonnie MacLean, Gary Grimshaw, Lee Conclin, Bob Schnepf found their echo in contemporary American art, and new movements such as Pop Art. The posters are proof of the way hippy culture – beyond all the reductive clichés – was active in many different areas of society. Through their forms, colours, and themes, the posters document an extraordinary period brimming with idealism. The psychedelic posters’ designs number among the creative highpoints of poster history. The exhibition has been made possible thanks to loans from the Hannover-based collectors, Lutz Hieber and Gisela Theising. Accompanying the exhibition will be a catalogue of the same name, published by Edition Folkwang/Steidl, Göttingen 2017. ISBN: 978-3-95829-367-0, price: €24 Opening times Tue to Sun 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Thurs and Fri 10 am to 8 p.m., Mon closed Press contact Anna Littmann, T +49 201 8845 160, [email protected] .