London’s Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) invites you to “turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream” into their exhibition of the pop and politics of the late ‘60s. “You Say You Want a Revolution? Records and Rebels 1966-1970,” runs from September 10 through February 26, 2017.Featuring hundreds of items — from Paul McCartney’s handwritten letter to Apple Corps announcing the breakup of the Beatles, to the first computer produced by a very different company called Apple — the exhibition charts the last five years of the sixties, where idealistic revolution was both on the streets and recorded on thousands of 12-inch vinyls. Quite simply, the show is a triumph, which is further proof of something already clear to many: no one puts on an exhibition quite like the V&A. It was voted UK's Museum of the Year in 2016 for a reason.As is the way of such big exhibitions, cutting-edge audiovisuals vie for attention with an extensive selection of artefacts. Sennheiser presents an audio environment similar to the one they produced for the V&A's “David Bowie Is…” exhibition, with the provided audio guide automatically changing what you hear based on what you’re looking at.What sets this show apart from, for example, this year’s Rolling Stones exhibition at Saatchi Gallery (which covered some of the same ground) are the little touches added by the V&A exhibition team. The section celebrating Woodstock through costumes and a looped screening of the film of the same name has an artificial grass floor. The area focusing on political revolution at the time leads to two exits, each with a sign saying, respectively, “Count Me In” and “Count Me Out” — a reference to the famously disputed lyrics from The Beatles’ “Revolution”/”Revolution 1.” It is details like these that create an exhibition that is truly immersive — a term that is now a hackneyed cliché in the art world, but that the V&A makes real.This attention to detail combined with an incredible array of artefacts mean that not only are the obvious figures — Hendrix, the Beatles, Dylan, Twiggy — mentioned, but also more esoteric ones are woven throughout. Examples include William Blake, whose imagery was proto-psychedelic, and psychiatrist R.D. Laing.Although a fantastic, must-see exhibition, “Records and Rebels” does miss out in comparison to the V&A's David Bowie show, with the lack of a central figure making it feel more freewheelin’ than an early ‘60s Bob Dylan. It is incredibly jarring, for example, to go from the paisley-pattern fashions of Mr Fish and co. straight into an exploration of the Maoist regime in China; and it's hard to think of another exhibition that would display French police riot gear opposite Jane Fonda’s barely-there “Barbarella” costume. This occasional lack of focus, however, is a small price to pay for such a wide-reaching, wonderful show from one of the world’s greatest museums.“You Say You Want a Revolution? Records and Rebels 1966 - 1970” runs from September 10, 2016 through February 26, 2017 at the Victoria and Albert Museum.
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