It is no exaggeration to say that BINJ wouldn’t have been able to present the authentic installation our nonprofit recently staged in Harvard Square without the help of David Bieber and the dedicated team at his namesake archive.
The Norwood, Massachusetts-based trove “represents 50-plus years of collecting and preserving the popular culture, music, and media of the 20th and 21st centuries.” For our purpose of highlighting the rich past of alternative publishing in Cambridge in particular, the abyss of everything from toys and instruments to literally millions of newspapers, magazines, records, press releases, and studio reels yielded almost every vintage slice of media ephemera on display at the Harvard Square KiOSK from June into early July. (Special thanks to Joe Packard and Chuck White of the David Bieber Archives for their help in every step of the curation process, from picking items to rotating the displays.)