Today we continue our tour of the Long Island Museum with Joshua Ruff, Co Executive Director, Collections & Programming. This time we’re traversing the 1970s through the exhibit Long Island in the ’70s. It was a decade of change that brought us the end of the Vietnam War, the opening of the Long Island Expressway, a gas crisis, a bicentennial, and so much more. Ruff and his staff, notably collections manager Andrea Squeri, have assembled an experience filled with everything from an AMC Matador Station Wagon to a Telstar Arcade and everyone from Nelson Rockefeller to Denis Potvin. If you lived through the ’70s, you’ll want to see this for yourself. And bring someone younger so that you can explain to them why you would sit in the way-back of a station wagon, facing out the back window with no seatbelts.

The exhibit runs through October 18th.

Further Research

• Long Island in the ’70s
• My Father’s Place
• Power of the People: How Opposition Sank the Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant 30 Years Ago
• Walk With Frank
• Cold Spring Harbor (Spotify)
  
• Audio Footnotes
  • Ellen Stark, daughter of Amityville Horror judge Thomas Stark (episode 158)
  • Karl Grossman on the Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant (episode 27)
  • Vietnam vet Frank Romeo w Christopher Verga (episode 147)
• Intro Music: https://homegrownstringband.com/
• Outro music: Capering by Blue Dot Sessions CC BY-NC 4.0