By Jill Colvin
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MIDTOWN — In one photograph, Allen Ginsberg stands in the snow wearing a sign that that reads "POT IS FUN." In another, a stoic Martin Luther King Jr. marches through the streets of Pittsburgh in protest of the Vietnam War.
These are just two of the images currently on display in the lobby gallery of 1285 Avenue of the Americas as part of the "60 From the 60s" exhibition celebrating the skyscraper's 50th birthday and marking the re-opening of the popular gallery space after its closure last year.
The photographs were all taken during the '60s, the decade the building was built, and are meant to transport viewers back to those years of protest, civil unrest and artistic experimentation.
"What's different about this show is it's a cross-section of what was happening," said Colin Thomson, who came up with the concept using images from the George Eastman House Collection.
The exhibit features 10 of the decades' most significant photographers — half of whom had found success at the time, and half of whom hadn't — including Benedict J. Fernandez, Hollis Frampton, Arnold Newman, and Mary Ellen Mark.
They range from photojournalism to abstract art, with portraits of politicians and celebrities mixed with graffiti and unidentified women walking through city streets.
The exhibition also marks the return of the popular gallery space after nearly a year of empty walls.
In early 2009, UBS, which houses its corporate headquarters in the building, decided to shut down the well-known gallery to cut costs during the recession, the building's assistant general manager, Julie Arce, said.
The quarterly exhibits had been a favorite of tenants and visitors for decades, attracting tour groups and collaborating with museums around the world.
UBS has not yet decided whether to continue the revival once the current show ends, but Arce said so far it's been a hit.
"I think it's a great thing," said Caleb Lui, 22, as he surveyed the photos as he waited for a friend working upstairs. Lui, visiting the city from Maryland, said he frequently goes to exhibitions and was excited to see a show right there.
Westsider Rosalind Gold, 68, who dropped in on her way to an appointment, said she always checks out the shows when she's in the neighborhood.
As she made her way through the exhibit, Gold was unimpressed at first.
"They're unusual photographs," she said, raising her eyebrows while looking quizzically at Garry Winogrand's abstract ''San Marcos, Texas," which depicts a headless woman swimming next to a pig. "I find it a little bizarre," she said.
But she warmed up when she turned the corner and stumbled on a collection of Arnold Newman's portraits, including one of Eleanor Roosevelt standing over a high pile of magazines in her office, Sugar Ray Robinson posing in a suit and Igor Stravinsky during rehearsals, sitting at a desk on a black and white checkered floor.
"This is more like it," she said as she admired Newman's work.
The exhibit, which is open Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., will run through Feb. 18, 2011.
