Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia

February 8–May 21, 2017

Explore how artists, architects, and designers intersected with the counterculture of the 1960s and early 1970s.

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Clay Geerdes: Cockettes Go Shopping, 1972; digital print; 42 x 28 in.; courtesy David Miller, from the estate of Clay Geerdes.
Haus-Rucker-Co (Günter Zamp Kelp, Klaus Pinter, and Laurids Ortner): Environment Transformer / Fliegenkopf (Environment Transformer / Flyhead),1968; courtesy Archive Zamp Kelp. Photo: Ben Rose.
Corita Kent: yellow submarine, 1967; silkscreen; 23 x 25 in.; Corita Art Center, Immaculate Heart Community, Los Angeles. Photo: Joshua White.

Upcoming
Films
Upcoming
Events
Selected
Objects
Past
Films
Past
Events

Past Events

Saturday, May 20, 2 PM
Analog Light Show Gathering

Get a behind-the-scenes look at the psychedelic art of the light show at this gathering of members of original performance groups as well as recent innovators.

BAMPFA
Saturday, May 13, 1 PM
Hippie Modernism Forum: Creative Communes

Could rural communes be the template for a new geography of creativity? Ramón Sender Barayón, Erin Elder, and Fritz Haeg discuss the question along with moderator Greg Castillo.

BAMPFA
Friday, May 12, 6 PM
Country Womyn Revisited

A reading and release party for a new publication in response to Country Women, a magazine created in the 1970s by women living in communes in Mendocino County.

BAMPFA
Sundays and Wednesdays
Guided Tour: Hippie Modernism (May)

Guided exhibition tour of Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia led by UC Berkeley graduate students.

BAMPFA
Saturday, April 15, 1 PM
Hippie Modernism Forum: Fluid Identities

Fayette Hauser, Lauren Onkey, and Brontez Purnell talk about how reinventions of identity—reflected in rock music, performance art, and other flamboyant forms of expression—propelled the counterculture movement. Moderated by Juana María Rodríguez.

BAMPFA
Thursday, April 6, 5–7 PM
Political Poster Draw Club

Come by the BAMPFA Art Lab to draw and collage your own political posters inspired by the protest art in Hippie Modernism.

BAMPFA
Sundays and Wednesdays
Guided Tour: Hippie Modernism (April)

Guided exhibition tour of Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia led by UC Berkeley graduate students.

BAMPFA
Saturday, April 1, 1 PM
SOLD OUT: Michael Pollan and Simon Sadler in Conversation

Journalist and best-selling author Pollan and architectural and urban historian Sadler talk about the history and use of psychedelics in therapeutic, philosophical, and cultural contexts.

BAMPFA
Sunday, March 19, 2–4 PM
Native Funk and Flash with Alexandra Jacopetti Hart

Join artist Hart for a talk and clothing customization workshop inspired by her 1974 book Native Funk and Flash: An Emerging Folk Art.

BAMPFA
Saturday, March 11, 1 PM
Hippie Modernism Forum: Liberated Territories

Anthony Raynsford, Bonnie Ora Sherk, and Lisa Uddin explore the radical geographies of counterculture politics in a discussion moderated by Sean Burns.

BAMPFA
Wednesday, March 8, 5–7 PM
Hippie Modernism Draw Club

Explore the power of observational drawing at a figure drawing class with a live nude model.

BAMPFA
Sunday, March 5, 2 PM
Larry Miller: Blueprint for Counter Education

Miller, author of Blueprint for Counter Education, explores objects and publications that informed his defining work of Vietnam War–era radical pedagogy.

BAMPFA
Wednesday–Sunday, various times
Theater 2 Hippie Modernism Shorts

Four programs of short films screening each afternoon feature works by Jordan Belson, Bruce Conner, John Whitney, and others, plus a 1967 documentary about San Francisco’s blossoming hippie scene.

BAMPFA
Sundays and Wednesdays
Guided Tour: Hippie Modernism (March)

Guided exhibition tour of Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia led by UC Berkeley graduate students.

BAMPFA
Saturday, February 18, 1—6PM
Hippie Modernism Home Movie & Family Album Day

Bring your 1960s and 1970s home movies, photos, flyers, and other print ephemera to BAMPFA for this Hippie Modernism–themed “show and tell."

BAMPFA
Friday, February 17, 6—8 PM
Analog Light Show Workshop

Come play with old overhead projectors, colored transparencies, prisms, mirrors, and more at this “light jam” with guest artist Jeff Manson. With special guest DJ.

BAMPFA
Sundays and Wednesdays
Guided Tour: Hippie Modernism (Feb)

Guided exhibition tour of Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia led by UC Berkeley graduate students.
Saturday, February 11, 1 PM
Hippie Modernism Forum: Counterculture / Cyberculture

The first of four Hippie Modernism forums exploring the contemporary relevance of the Bay Area hippie legacy. With guests Lee Felsenstein, Fred Turner, Lynn Hershman Leeson, and moderator Greg Niemeyer.

BAMPFA
Saturday, February 11, 11:30 AM—1 PM & 1—2:30 PM
Family Fare: Fabric Collage

Following a tour of fabric artworks on view in Hippie Modernism, create collages with artist Jennie Lennick using upcycled fabrics. For kids 6–12 and their families.

BAMPFA

Ages 6 to 12 with accompanying adult(s)
Wednesday, February 8, 1:30 PM
Gallery Talk with Curator Greg Castillo

Guest curator Greg Castillo introduces the themes of Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia and talks about some of the works on view in the exhibition.

BAMPFA
Tuesday, February 7, 7–10 PM
Hippie Modernism Public Preview

Free public preview of Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia featuring modular synth instruments from Oakland’s Vintage Synthesizer Museum.

BAMPFA

Admission free

Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia

February 8–May 21, 2017

This major exhibition is the first comprehensive exploration of the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s and its impact on global art, architecture, and design. It presents an extraordinary array of works—many of which have been added for the Berkeley presentation—including experimental furniture, immersive environments, media installations, alternative magazines and books, printed ephemera, and films that convey the social, cultural, and political ferment of this transformative period, when radical experiments challenged convention, overturned traditional hierarchies, and advanced new communal ways of living and working. In the art, architecture, and design of the counterculture one can see early stirrings of the tech revolution and ecological consciousness, as well as powerful expressions of the desire for peace and social justice.

Hippie Modernism shows us how the counterculture, once...

Hippie Modernism shows us how the counterculture, once dismissed as a social and aesthetic anomaly, introduced ideas and techniques that have profoundly shaped contemporary life. The BAMPFA presentation highlights the key role the Bay Area—and especially Berkeley—played in the art, architecture, and design of the counterculture movement. Creative innovators in Bay Area communities sought to create radical change—technological, political, and ecological—on the streets, in the classroom, and in government policy.

Among the central themes of the exhibition is the desire to expand consciousness and achieve greater awareness of the holistic relationship of self, world, and cosmos. Altered states of perception were stimulated not only by meditation and psychotropic substances but also by art and design. Other works address the rejection of conventional social structures and the dissolution of boundaries between art and life, culture and politics. Archival materials from Bay Area protest movements and collectives represent the transformative activism of the period.

While this exhibition presents an extraordinary range of archival materials and artifacts from the past, its greatest importance lies in the lessons it holds for the present and future. Most of the pressing social and environmental issues addressed by the counterculture are still with us today. We hope that this exhibition and its accompanying programs will provide a productive platform for discussion and insight about our contemporary realities.

Screenings in Theater Two

Complementing the gallery exhibition, four programs of short films screen each afternoon in Theater Two on BAMPFA's lower level. They feature works by Jordan Belson, Bruce Conner, John Whitney, and others, plus a 1967 documentary about San Francisco’s blossoming hippie scene. See the schedule.

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Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia is organized by the Walker Art Center in association with the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA). The exhibition was curated by Andrew Blauvelt, director of Cranbrook Art Museum. The BAMPFA presentation is organized by Director and Chief Curator Lawrence Rinder and guest curator Greg Castillo, associate professor of architecture at the University of California, Berkeley.

The exhibition is made possible with support from the Martin and Brown Foundation, the Prospect Creek Foundation, Annette and John Whaley, and Audrey and Zygi Wilf. Support for the exhibition catalog is provided by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in support of Walker Art Center publications. The BAMPFA presentation is made possible with generous support from an anonymous donor, Goodby Silverstein & Partners, Coleman Fung, Frances Hellman and Warren Breslau, Nion McEvoy and Leslie Berriman, Adobe, Carla and David Crane, Chip Conley Foundation, Beth Rudin DeWoody, Alexis and Trevor Traina, LEF Foundation, Donna and Gary Freedman, Gyöngy Laky and Thomas Layton, Greg Castillo and Gary Brown, Chris Desser and Kirk Marckwald, and Joyce and Mark Hulbert.

Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia

February 8–May 21, 2017

Selected Exhibition Objects

Photograph

William Lloyd and Gary Anderson with the recycle symbol at the Container Corporation of America

Work on paper

Untitled (Park Here Any Time)

Painting

Hello Dali

Isaac Abrams

Photograph

Jimi Hendrix

Ira Cohen

Work on paper

Women in Design: The Next Decade

Sheila Levrant de Bretteville

Print

Environment Transformer / Fliegenkopf (Environment Transformer / Flyhead)

Haus-Rucker-Co

Work on paper

Payne’s Gray

Judith Williams

Sculpture

Quilted Coat

Frances Butler

Print

New Possibilities Show poster

Gordon Ashby

Installation

Stool #2

J.B. Blunk

Photograph

Emeryville Mudflats

Robert Sommer

Photograph

Handmade Houses

Barry Shapiro

Photograph

Community Memory terminal at Leopold’s Records, Berkeley, California

Photograph

Angels of Light: Portrait of Debra Bauer and Rodney Price

Print

Cockettes Go Shopping

​Clay Geerdes

Print

yellow submarine

Corita Kent

Furniture

Superonda Sofa

Archizoom Associati

Past Events

Clay Geerdes