The Victoria and Albert Museum has just announced a major new exhibition examining the significance and impact of the late 1960’s on our lives today. 

You Say You Want a Revolution? Records and Rebels 1966-1970 will reveal how this period of time still remains influential in our everyday lives in 2016. From global civil rights, multiculturalism, environmentalism, consumerism, computing, communality to neoliberalist politics, this exhibition examines closely the upheaval, the freedom and the legal changes that took place to help create the world we live in today.

The display, running at the museum from September, will feature more than 350 objects such as photography, literature and music that will illustrate the way in which a whole generation was able to shake off the past and revolutionise their lives.

Some of the highlights of the display will include: a shopping list written behind barricades during the 1968 Paris student riots; a moon rock on loan from NASA alongside the space suit worn by William Anders, who took the defining ‘Earthrise’ photograph on the Apollo 8 mission; an Ossie Clark costume for Mick Jagger and the suits worn by John Lennon and George Harrison on the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. 

Martin Roth, Director of the V&A said: “This seminal exhibition will shed new light on the wide-reaching social, cultural and intellectual changes of the late 1960s which followed the austerity of the post-war years, not just in the UK but throughout the Western world.”

Many of the objects selected for the exhibition are taken from the Victoria and Albert Museum’s own collection, as well as some very important loans to reveal the connections between people and movements from across the UK, Europe and the USA.

You Say You Want a Revolution? Records and Rebels 1966-1970 runs at the V&A from the 10th September 2016 – 26th February 2017. Tickets are available to buy now, with admission costing £16 (concessions available).