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University of Iowa Museum of Art Opens Exhibit of Hip Hop Early Years

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A group of young, black students at New York’s Adelphi University looks into the camera, each with an individual intensity in his eyes. It is 1983, and a shared passion draws these men together in the name of a new form of cultural expression: hip-hop.This scene from hip-hop’s early years describes one of the photographs in the University of Iowa Museum of Art ( UIMA ) multifaceted on-campus exhibition, “Two Turntables and a Microphone: Hip-Hop Contexts featuring Harry Allen’s ‘Part of the Permanent Record: Photos from the Previous Century.’”

The exhibition opens Saturday, March 27 and remains on view through June 27 in the Black Box Theater at the Iowa Memorial Union ( IMU ). The show features 40 large, black-and-white photographs by Harry Allen ( photo, right ), hip-hop activist and media assassin with the seminal hip-hop group Public Enemy.

Allen’s images, which document hip-hop’s origins, gained public attention after a 2007 exhibition at the Eyejammie Fine Arts Gallery in New York City. Through the collaborative efforts of co-curators Deborah Whaley, UI assistant professor of American studies and African American studies, and Kembrew McLeod, UI associate professor of communication studies, the photos are on display alongside additional archival materials, including audio clips, album covers, hip-hop flyers and a digital display of the work of pioneering graffiti artist Lady Pink. As a whole, the exhibition seeks to immerse viewers in the story of the multiple origins and growth of hip-hop in the 1980s.

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