The City Lost and Found: Capturing New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, 1960–1980

Kenneth Josephson, Chicago, 1969. Photo collage.
Kenneth Josephson, Chicago, 1969. Photo collage. © The Art Institute of Chicago, Gift of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago © Kenneth Josephson

U.S. cities witnessed incredible physical and social change between the presidencies of John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. In a span of two decades, the federal government's War on Poverty was born, whittled down, and effectively neutered all while the communities it served reckoned with the decline of industry and the increasingly dominant role of real estate and finance in urban development.

From Boston to Seattle, any major American city could serve as a case study on this especially turbulent period, but a current exhibit and its corresponding book submit that we need look no further than the country's three largest metropolises.

The City Lost and Found: Capturing New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, 1960-1980, currently at the Princeton University Art Museum, explores the master plans, protests, and art that defined the massive shifts that took place within these three cities' streets, homes, and offices during those years.