{"product_id":"can-man-survive-american-museum-of-natural-history-centennial-new-york-1969","title":"CAN MAN SURVIVE? — American Museum of Natural History Centennial, New York, 1969","description":"\u003cp\u003eExhibition catalogue. 20 × 20 cm. 16 pages. Staple-bound softcover. Offset-printed text and black-and-white photography on paper. Cover designed by Edward Krent. American Museum of Natural History, New York, 1969.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePublished for the American Museum of Natural History’s centennial exhibition \u003cem\u003eCan Man Survive?\u003c\/em\u003e, presented in the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Hall from 1969 until May 1971. The square booklet combines documentary photographs of refuse, industrial pollution, overcrowding and urban noise with short texts describing the environmental and physical consequences of modern life.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe exhibition replaced the museum’s conventional celebration of nature with an explicitly pessimistic multimedia environment concerned with polluted air and water, overpopulation and the declining conditions of life on Earth. Its theatrical use of photography, film, projection, sound and lighting placed natural-history display close to the expanded media and ecological debates emerging at the end of the 1960s.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eRobert Smithson visited the exhibition and produced a text titled \u003cem\u003eCan Man Survive?\u003c\/em\u003e in response. The publication was also recorded in his personal library, connecting this minor institutional catalogue to his wider interests in entropy, environmental deterioration and the unstable authority of museum display.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA compact record of the moment ecological crisis entered the museum as image, spectacle and warning.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eCondition: good vintage condition. Pronounced rubbing and scratching to the black covers, with edge wear, softened corners and light age toning. Internally complete. The surface wear remains evidence of handling, circulation and retention.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"American Museum of Natural History","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53844335329618,"sku":"AMNH-CANMANSURVIVE-CAT-1969","price":165.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0991\/5636\/1554\/files\/Can_Man_Survive_American_Museum_of_Natural_History_Centennial_1869-1969_1969.jpg?v=1782464068","url":"https:\/\/thenewrare.com\/products\/can-man-survive-american-museum-of-natural-history-centennial-new-york-1969","provider":"The New Rare","version":"1.0","type":"link"}