RobKirkpatrick.com

Here’s something new about 1969…turns out the first piece of art was placed on the moon by way of a tiny disc secretly affixed to one of the legs of the lunar module for Apollo 12:

http://www.aolnews.com/weird-news/article/tiny-art-museum-hidden-aboard-apollo-12-for-its-moon-landing/19516542?icid=main|main|dl1|link4|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aolnews.com%2Fweird-news%2Farticle%2Ftiny-art-museum-hidden-aboard-apollo-12-for-its-moon-landing%2F19516542

One might ask if these were the best examples of art that man could have sent to the moon, but there you go…

In an interview just posted on Spinner, former Rolling Stones tour manager Sam Cutler talks for the first time about the infamous Altamont Free Concert from December 1969.

http://www.spinner.com/2010/03/29/sam-cutler-rolling-stones-altamont/?ncid=webmaildl2

Cutler blames the fiasco that occurred that day on the fact that the stage was only three feet high, which is one factor I cited in my Huffington Post piece commemorating the 40th anniversary of Altamont:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rob-kirkpatrick/the-day-the-music-died-th_b_381731.html

For more on this and other incidents, both good and bad, from that memorable year, check out 1969: The Year Everything Changed (Skyhorse Publishing, 1969).

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) posted an interesting Q&A with multimedia artist Sam Durant and documentary filmmaker Sam Green, who discussed 1969 and their work inspired by the Altamont Free Concert. Curator Jenée Misraje mentions my book and asks about the cultural resonance of 1969:

http://blog.sfmoma.org/2009/12/altamont/

I appreciated Misraje’s observation that “Artists, curators and historians have been placing a greater amount of attention to this time in history [1969]” and Durant’s suggestion that “1969 haunts the U.S. more than 1968.”  I especially appreciated their discussion given Carlos Lozada’s recent piece in The Washington Post, in which he argues I had to ”outdo 1968″:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/11/AR2009121102590.html?hpid%3Dopinionsbox1

Perhaps for some people, the amazing slew of events from 1969 to which we still look back is not that big a deal. This Post writer seems to imply 1959 was the more momentous year, yet strangely I did not see many 50th anniversary celebrations this past year. 

The quote he cites from my Introduction is presented out of context, but I have a letter into the Post about this…