Museum of American History takes a look back at the 1960s

WASHINGTON: In 1964, The Beatles made their first trip to the United States, MaryPoppins had its world premiere and LBJ defeated Barry Goldwater to win a full term as president. Also, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of History and Technology opened on the Mall. That cultural storehouse, now the National Museum of American History, is marking its 50th anniversary with a display of artefacts from “The Early Sixties”, an exuberant and volatile period.

Two of the items won’t fit in a display case: a diorama of the New York World’s Fair, which also opened in 1964, and a 1965 Ford Mustang, silvery but not all that sleek by today’s standards. The rest are in two large facing cabinets, divided between “Culture” and “Science”.

The distinction is a matter of interpretation. A copy of Silent Spring, Rachel Carson’s book about the effects of pesticides, is on the culture side. So is a Family Radiation Measurement Kit, although a photo of Cold War-era schoolchildren under their desks during an A-bomb drill is in the science case. Such artefacts tell stories that overlap, parallel and diverge, from an era when American society was travelling in multiple directions at great speed.

‘Can You Pass the Acid Test’ poster

For many Americans, the new turn-on of the mid-’60s was colour TV. But a pioneering few switched the channel to LSD, which was legal in California until 1966. This one-of-a-kind collaged poster — dated only to “the 1960s” — promises an appearance by a band whose music was almost mandatory for tripping: the Grateful Dead.

Harlem Globetrotters jersey

The jersey belonged to Hubert “Geese” Ausbie, a Harlem Globetrotter from 1961 to 1985 and Meadowlark Lemon’s successor as the “Clown Prince of Basketball”. Founded in racially segregated Chicago in the 1920s, the team vaulted over racial barriers. When the 1960s began, the Globetrotters had just completed a series of games in Moscow.

Paper dress

When the paper “Souper” dress debuted in 1966, it was just four years before the first Earth Day, but still a golden age of disposability. Riffing on Andy Warhol’s appropriation of its label design, the Campbell’s Soup Co. sought to immortalize its product with throwaway couture.

Mustang pedal car

The sporty Mustang was designed for the young at heart, but some fans were literally too young to drive. For them, Ford introduced this pedal-driven miniature, designed to make Mustang aficionados of the under-10 set while publicizing the version that used horsepower rather than foot power.

NOW button

The National Organization for Women was founded in Washington in 1966, although the logo on this button wasn’t introduced until 1969. The button is displayed next to a copy of The Feminine Mystique, by NOW co-founder Betty Friedan. Something just as relevant to NOW’s mission is in the science case: a prototype of a dispenser for birth control pills, approved by the FDA in 1960.

Klystron tube

The sofa-length artefact on display, this klystron tube is a vacuum device that amplifies very high frequencies. Such tubes have many uses, but this one is a veteran of the Cold War. Built in 1959, it was used for three years at a radar station in Greenland, helping to scan the skies for Soviet bombers and missiles.

—By arrangement with The Washington Post

Published in Dawn, May 22nd, 2014

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