Harry Smith pointing finger upward

Outsider’s Outsider

At once famous and obscure, marginal and central, Harry Smith anticipated and even invented several important elements of Sixties counterculture.
An uncredited performer with a member of the Delta Rhythm Boys in Give Me Some Skin (1946).

Jammin’ in the Panoram

During World War II, proto–music videos called “soundies” blared pop patriotism from visual jukeboxes across American bars.
Marijuana leaves superimposed over photo of two men.

The Dank Underground

In the late Sixties, countercultural media was distributed by the Underground Press Syndicate and bankrolled by marijuana.
Black-and-white collage style poster for the Jewish Museum

Fuzz! Junk! Rumble!

A show at the Jewish Museum surveys three eventful years of art, film, and performance in New York City—and the political upheavals that defined them.
Comic of a boy inside an atom structure while a man looks on.

The Surprising History of the Comic Book

Since their initial popularity during World War II, comic books have always been a medium for American counterculture and for nativism and empire. 

Ronald Reagan’s Reel Life

Did the movies ever matter? They did to Ronald Reagan.

What Makes ‘The Living Dead’ My Film of 1968

In so many ways, George Romero's lo-budget horror film defined the year 1968.

Jewish Heroes and Nazi Monsters

The many lives of ferocious cartoonist and illustrator Arthur Szyk at a jewel of a show at the New-York Historical Society.