If 1969 was the height of counterculture revolution in this country, then 1963 was the year when matters began shifting into high gear. This was the year when The Beatles released their first album and Bob Dylan released his second; when Medgar Evers was assassinated in Mississippi and all hell was breaking loose in Birmingham; when the situation in Vietnam was escalating and Buddhist monks took to setting themselves on fire; when Martin Luther King was taken to jail for “parading without a permit” and 250,000 African-Americans carried out their March on Washington. It was the year when JFK was taken out in Dealey Plaza – an assassination Malcolm X subsequently referred to as “chickens coming home to roost”. Simply put, 1963 was the year when every sociopolitical issue in this country was turned completely upside down. A full half-century down the line, the 1963 exhibition of black and white photographs at Howard Greenberg Gallery captures a great deal of that emotion, serving as a necessary reminder of just how far this country has come over the past 50 years, and just how very far it still has to go.
(1963 debuts today at Howard Greenberg Gallery and continues through July 6th. Free, 41 East 57th Street, Suite 1406)
Five More For The Offing:
- Punk: Chaos to Couture @ The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Free with suggested donation, through 7/7, Gallery 773, 82nd Street at 5th Avenue)
- New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA) Show @ Pier 36/Basketball City (Free, 5/10-5/12, 299 South Street)
- Entre Deux Mondes by Phillipe Charles Jacquet @ Axelle Fine Arts Galerie (Free, through 5/26, 472 West Broadway)
- Piero della Francesca in America @ The Frick Collection ($18 general admission, through 5/19, 1 East 70th Street)
- Outside Inside Sensibility by Stewart Uoo and Jana Euler ($20 general admission, 5/10-8/11, 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street)