We were surprised to get an email from Brandon Joseph at The Brooklyn Museum asking if we would be willing to spare some issues of the BGN for an exhibit on fanzines.

We replied “Sure! We’ll send you some copies.” But they needed the originalsm this was for a legit museum exhibition! The material would be insured, and we had to sign official releases.

So, wow the BGN is gonna be in a museum! This show was a big deal to say the least, we did not know that when it all started out, but once I got to the Brooklyn Museum on November 15th for the opening celebration exclusive to the artists involved in Copy Machine Manifestos!!

We were contacted, as was Wille Alexander and Marc Thor, because of our association with Mark Morrisroe who, along with Lynelle White, produced the dishy DIRT magazine. Mark was figured prominently in the show, kind of like the overseer to other Boston based ‘zines. On the wall in the first full room was a huge self portrait of Mark next his portrait of Lynelle.

I turned around and there was the rest of Boston contingent: Willie’s The Nervous Reader, Marc Thor’s Sleaze and a couple copies of Miscarriage mags by Loretta Barretta and Carmen Monoxide.

Then to my surprise, as I was kind of chuckling at the fact that the BGN and our names were in a museum exhibition I turned around and there was Marc Thor!!! I hadn’t seen March in at least 40+ years!! As you can see by the photo below he looked fantastic. He is still teaching music in Brooklyn. I asked about Nola Rezzo. He said “Yes Nola is here somewhere” and there she was as well! WOW!!

This show is really the first exhibition dedicated to real fanzines, covering 50 years of zines from the present back to the 70’s!

“Since the 1970s, zines … have given a voice and visibility to many operating outside of mainstream culture. This exhibition documents zines’ relationship to various subcultures and avant-garde practices, from punk and street culture to conceptual, queer, and feminist art.” That’s what made zines such a ‘punk’ thing, they were truly DIY, they covered the stuff we knew and loved. This exhibition includes about 100 artists and over 1000 pieces. It is extensive, filling several large rooms and covering decades of Fanzines for a wide variety of interests.

Who knew! When putting together the BGN back then when there was no internet. The only way we knew to find out about other fanzines was in the back pages of magazines like Rock Scene. This exhibit opens up a whole new world on all the topics and tastes covered by fanzines.

There was an entire wall devoted to Hardcore. And there were other well-known zines like Destroy All Monsters, Bikini Kill, Slash, Search & Destroy.

Copy Machine Manifesto, at The Brooklyn Museum, is up through March 2024. Here's some more photos......

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