Tracing the career and achievements of a band that became one of the most significant cultural forces in 20th century America, the New-York Historical Society presents The Grateful Dead: Now Playing at the New-York Historical Society. The exhibition, on view from March 5 to September 5, 2010, represents the first large-scale exhibition of materials from the Grateful Dead Archive, housed at the University of California Santa Cruz.

Through a wealth of original materials, the exhibition will explore the musical creativity and influence of the Grateful Dead from 1965 to 1995, the sociological phenomenon of the Deadheads (the band's network of devoted fans) and the enduring impact of the Dead's pioneering approach to the music business. Among the objects in the exhibition will be documents, instruments, audio and video recordings, album art, photographs, platinum records, posters, programs, newsletters, tickets, and t-shirts and other merchandise. Highlights will include the band's first record contract, tour itineraries, backstage guest lists, decorated fan mail, rare LP test pressings, drawings for the fabled Wall of Sound amplifier array, scripts for the Grateful Dead ticket hotline, notebooks of Dead archivist Dick Latvala, life-size skeleton props used in the band's "Touch of Grey" video and large-scale marionettes and other stage props.

"Despite the Grateful Dead's close association with California, the band and New York have been an important part of each other's history from the first time the Dead played here in 1967 to the band's year-on-year performances in New York from the late 1970s through 1995," commented Dr. Louise Mirrer, President and CEO of the New-York Historical Society. "This exhibition not only celebrates the band's relationship with New York but its tremendous impact on American culture."

"The Grateful Dead Archive is one of the most significant popular cultural collections of the 20th century," said Christine Bunting, the head of Special Collections and Archives at the University Library at UC Santa Cruz. "We are delighted that the Historical Society is presenting this unprecedented exhibition, providing the public and the thousands of fans with such an exciting overview of the band's musical journey."

The Grateful Dead: Now Playing at the New-York Historical Society provides unique glimpses into the political and social upheavals and artistic awakenings of the 1960s and 1970s, a tumultuous and transformative period that shaped our current cultural and political landscape, and examines how the Grateful Dead's origin in northern California in the mid-1960s was informed by the ideology and spirit of both the Beat Generation and the burgeoning Hippie scene, including the now-legendary Acid Tests. The exhibition also explores how the band's refusal to follow the established rules of the record industry revealed an unexpected business savvy that led to innovations in a rapidly changing music industry, and also to a host of consumer-driven marketing enrichments that kept fans in frequent contact with the band.

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Recalling the desperate fight for life that used to be waged by juvenile diabetes patients, and commemorating the events of 1921 that inaugurated a new era of hope for them and their families, the New-York Historical Society will present the exhibition Breakthrough: The Dramatic Story of the Discovery of Insulin from October 5, 2010 through January 31, 2011. Exploring the roles of science, government, higher education and industry in developing and distributing a life-saving drug, the exhibition will bring to life the personalities who discovered insulin and raced to bring it to the world and will tell the story of one extraordinary New York girl—Elizabeth Evans Hughes, daughter of the leading statesman and jurist Charles Evans Hughes—who was among the very first patients to be saved.

To lead visitors through this history, from the discovery of insulin in Toronto by Dr. Frederick Banting in 1921 and its first human trials in 1922 to its widespread use today, Breakthrough will feature digital interactives, film, artifacts and ephemera drawn from the Historical Society's own collections and from archives including those of the University of Toronto, Eli Lilly and Company, the Rockefeller Institute, the Joslin Clinic and the New York Academy of Medicine.

The first chapter will recount the excitement, and the clash of personalities, among the scientists whose research led to the discovery of insulin, beginning in May 1921. Also included in this chapter will be an account of the valiant but heartbreaking efforts of Dr. Frederick Allen in the years before the discovery to prolong the lives of diabetic children through the use of a starvation diet. The story of Elizabeth Evans Hughes, told in part through actual treatment charts and period letters, will bring to life the impact of insulin when it first became available. Because Elizabeth was the daughter of Charles Evans Hughes—Governor of New York (1907–1910), Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (1910–1916), United States Secretary of State (1921–1925) and Chief Justice of the United States (1930–1941)—her survival provided powerful testimony to the value of insulin, and helped bring the work of Dr. Allen and Dr. Banting to the world's stage.

The exhibition's second chapter will examine how insulin became available for widespread medical use through a partnership between the University of Toronto and Eli Lilly and Company—the first such collaboration between an academic institution and a drug company. Photographs from the Lilly archives will reveal the painstaking early method of manufacturing insulin in mass quantities—an innovative industrial process that ran from the slaughterhouse to the laboratory. Display cases of syringes, vials, testing kits for blood sugar and other equipment will take the story of insulin treatment from the 1920s up through today.

The exhibition's final chapter will tell about recent developments—notably the synthesis of insulin in the 1980s as the world's first biotechnology drug—and the current state of research, development, treatment and demography of diabetes. Included in this chapter will be information about the alarming increase in prevalence of Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes in the past decade, and the ways in which individuals, families and institutions can address this health crisis. The exhibition will conclude with a presentation of Life for a Child, a documentary film produced by the International Diabetes Federation and Eli Lilly and Company to raise awareness of the devastating impact of the disease.

Breakthrough will be installed in the Historical Society's 1,300-square-foot temporary gallery, located just off the 77th Street entrance, while the remainder of the landmark Central Park West building undergoes a $60 million architectural renovation.