DREAMS UNREAL
Realizing Dreams Unreal
T
Psychedelic posters represent the art and artists of 1960s counterculture.
HE RISE OF THE TEENAGER. The birth of the hippie. Changing times. The 1960s and ‘70s meant experimen-
tation, love, war, music, and death—all themes represented in Dreams Unreal: The Genesis of the Psychedelic Rock Poster. Curated by Titus O’Brien, the exhibition and accompanying book, published by the University of New Mexico Press, explores the development of an art form that hinged on life in San Francisco from 1965 to 1970. The exhibition features more than 150 psychedelic posters, handbills, and postcards while the nearly 400-page book includes 50 illustrations and photographs, as well as 200 full-color plates. Much of the work in the exhibition comes from Dr. James Gunn, a private collector who lives in Truth or Consequences and recently donated the posters to the Museum. Gunn was attending UC Berkeley Medical School in the late 1960s, when someone handed him a concert handbill. Prior to medical school, Gunn had studied art and the handbill’s style intrigued him. This was the genesis of his collection, and although he lost many of the first handbills he collected, he found a store selling psychedelic concert posters and bought nearly 300 of them. Gunn moved from Berkeley to Gallup and then to T or C, and the posters languished in storage. Gunn approached the Albuquerque Museum, hoping to donate the collection. “I wanted them to have a good home,” he says.
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WINTER 2020
Art. History. People.
Bonnie MacLean BG89: Eric Burdon, Mother Earth, Hour Glass; Fillmore, Oct. 19-21, 1967, offset lithograph on paper, Albuquerque Museum, gift of Dr. James Gunn
