“ROLL OVER, BEETHOVEN” — Rock & Roll Exhibition: 1963-1973
In 1963, a youth-driven cultural revolution exploded onto the streets. Swinging London flooded Europe and America with its music, fashion and art. A young and restless post-war generation were making their own excitement and adventure. They rejected the music, clothes and social mores of their parents, picking up guitars, scissors and paintbrushes to take over stage, radio, television, galleries and catwalks; they filled pubs and clubs with a rock and roll sound whose roots reached back into the great blues music of the ’50s.
Between the heartfelt pop of the Beatles, the subversive grooves of the Rolling Stones and the space-age strangeness of David Bowie, popular culture underwent rapid and unprecedented evolution. The fusion of creative abundance and an insatiable public appetite for novelty created a momentum that fuelled an American rock awakening which carried on into the ’70s, and beyond. And our great photographers were there – on the movie set, aboard the tour bus, in the front row of the concert – waiting to capture the spectacle as it unfolded.
On Display
Join us at our new location in central London for an exhibition that captures the period that would define rock and roll as we know it.
