Kennedy to Kent State: Images of a Generation

Loretta reports:

The Worcester Art Museum, a jewel of a small museum in Central Massachusetts, has mounted countless intriguing, beautiful, and thought-provoking exhibitions, (I’ve blogged about one here), some garnered from its own collection.

That’s the case with Kennedy to Kent State: Images of a Generation, a show of photographs covering the period we all think of as The Sixties.  Many of the images are burned into the national psyche.  But even those who’ve lived through the era might be surprised at the show’s emotional impact, which I attribute to a combination of the images, the exhibition design, and the understated narrative.  In the middle of the exhibition area you can retreat into little rooms, each of which contains a a bit of television from the time.  It’s . . . intense.

Those of you who can’t make the trip to Worcester by 3 February 2013 can get a good sampling of the show from the Boston Globe review embedded below.

 

You can watch a sharper and larger version here at the Boston Globe’s site, and you can read a review here.

The Worcester Art Museum also partnered with the Worcester Historical Museum and the Worcester Women’s History Project to create an oral history to augment the exhibition.  You can see the videos here, on their site or here on Pinterest.

Because the show’s photos belong to the WAM, the images posted here are courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA.

Note that both major events, the JFK assassination and the Civil Rights March, occurred in the same year, 1963.

Above left: Warren K. Leffler, Civil rights march on Wash[ington], D.C., 1963 Aug. 28.
Below right: Victor Hugo King, John F. Kennedy motorcade, Dallas, Texas, Nov. 22, 1963.