THE
‘60s
REVISITED
Immersive Sound Transports Museum Visitors Back in Time
L
ike many young music fa-
natics and political junk-
ies, my obsessions grew
from a love of the classic
rock bands I discovered in
high school. The Beatles,
The Rolling Stones, Bob
Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Janis
Joplin, The Who, Cre-
dence Clearwater Revival,
and the like were the soundtrack to my for-
mative years. They awakened me not only
to the mind-bending world of rock and roll,
but also to the world of politics, protest, and
social change. Devouring the biographies
of my favourite (often dead) rock stars, it
was clear the art of the 1960s and early-‘70s
couldn’t be separated from the politics of
the era, and so I dug deeper, reading books
like Abbie Hoffman’s Steal This Book and The
Autobiography of Malcolm X.
Though I missed the times by a few
decades, the golden age of rock and roll
and youth protest transfixed me, and still
30 • PROFESSIONAL SOUND
By Michael Raine
does. I wanted to be occupying the dean’s
office at Columbia University in 1968, or
at John and Yoko’s bedside in Montreal’s
Queen Elizabeth Hotel during the Bed-In for
Peace, or shirtless and muddy in the middle
of the crowd at Woodstock. Fifty years after
the Summer of Love, I was able to get a little
closer to those experiences thanks to an
innovative exhibition at the Montreal Muse-
um of Fine Arts (MMFA).
Opened in mid-June and closing on Oct.
9, 2017, the MMFA’s Revolution exhibit ex-
amines the “social fabric” of the late-1960s,
looking at the intersection of music and
politics, along with film, literature, design,
and advertising. The exhibition looks at all
of the major societal shifts of the period,
from the Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam War
movements to the sexual revolution, wom-
en’s rights, and black power. The stories are
told using around 700 objects, including
John Lennon’s Sgt. Pepper uniform and the
throne-like chair seen in the iconic photo of
Black Panthers Co-Founder Huey P. New-
ton, in addition to album covers, books,
photos, posters, films, consumer products,
and more. For the exhibition’s Montreal
run, the MMFA’s Diane Charbonneau, curator
of modern and contemporary decorative
arts and photography, added Quebec-
focused content from the province’s late-
’60s protests movements. Throughout the
exhibition, visitors are treated to a shifting
and carefully-selected soundtrack as they
move about.
The Revolution exhibition first launched
at the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) in
London, England, and is curated by the
same team that created the widely-praised
David Bowie Is exhibition, which launched
in 2013 and is still traveling the world, as
well as the new Pink Floyd: Their Mortal
Remains exhibition. In addition to the
V&A’s curating team of Victoria Broackes
and Geoffrey Marsh, all three music-centric
exhibitions have another key contributor
in common: Sennheiser.