USCO’s Be-In became Life magazine’s cover image for psychedelic art

Evidence

Life magazine’s May 27 issue ran a cover story on the WILD NEW FLASHY BEDLAM OF THE DISCOTHEQUE. USCO’s Be-In at the Riverside Museum (which occupied the first floor of a twenty-seven-story deco skyscraper on the corner of 103rd Street and Riverside Drive) would provide the cover image for Life’s September 9 story on psychedelic art. Be-In was less a show, like MoMA’s Responsive Eye, than a unified environment. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 876

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Be-In as a ‘unified environment’ rather than a disconnected show is a direct data point for how immersive venues structured the psychedelic scene — relevant to the ‘Graffing & Growth’ infrastructure-level reading of how scenes are built from environments.
• SHARE: Send to a friend into media history: Life magazine validating a downtown immersive installation by putting it on the cover — mainstream co-opting the underground.