68 - Pop & Protest
With around 200 objects, ‘68. Pop and Protest’ is the new exhibition at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg (MKG).
The year 1968 witnessed a series of dramatic events that have shaken the world: the student protest in Paris, the Black Power salute at the summer Olympics in Mexico City or the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee. It also initiated sexual freedom, avant-garde forms of expressions, non-violence movements together with progressive music, unconventional styles and a new generation of film makers.
The exhibition, at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg (MKG), has its initial focus on the situation in Hamburg at that end of the 1960s, and for all how the students at Hamburg University revolted.
The display includes the UP5 & UP6 armchair by Gaetano Pesco as a critical statement on women’s social role. The creation was also revolutionary for the use of polyurethane foam construction and and its vacuum packed shipping format as a true new process in design.
I was pleased to (finally) see in real life part of the legendary Canteen and Bar by Verner Panton. Commissioned by Der Spiegel (Hamburg) in 1968, it is bold and colourful. The designer did almost the entire building with monochrome editorial floors with each colour selected to support and encourage work/workers, a swimming pool, reception area, and the canteen and bar. A proper licensed one. Over the years Panton’s work was slowly painted over or refurnished away, and when Der Spiegel moved to a new building in 2012 the last remnants of canteen and bar were acquired by the MKG, where they stand today in their (largely) orangey glory as a potent reminder of both the spirit of the times and also the importance of Verner Panton.
68. Pop und Protest runs at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Steintorplatz in Hamburg until Sunday March 17th, 2019. A great occasion to enjoy this exploration of the relationships between the social and political developments of the late 1960s and the cultural manifestations of the period.
