Exhibition commemorating the 80th anniversary of the Normandy landings.
Where did the American soldiers who gave their lives on the Normandy beaches in the early hours of June 6, 1944 come from?
What was their history, their imagination and their culture? To pay tribute to these freedom fighters, on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the Normandy Landings, the Caen Memorial invites us to tell the story of the America in which they grew up. From 1919 to 1944, it traces the cultural, social and political history of the American people, from the triumphant return of the soldiers after the First World War to the Landing on the French beaches, via the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression.
Bringing together exceptional loans from major American institutions (Smithsonian Institution in Washington, Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in New York State, Steinbeck Center in Salinas, California, Academy Awards and Hollywood studios Warner Bros. and Paramount studios in Los Angeles) and from public and private collections in Europe (Mémorial de Caen, Chaplin?s World in Corsier-sur-Vevey, Switzerland, Musée de la Grande Guerre in Meaux, France), the exhibition tells the story of a creative and complex America, spared neither tension nor crisis. Organized in chronological chapters, the exhibition will bring the era to life, particularly through the medium of film, to capture its light and shadow.
The exhibition?s subtitle, Under the Red, White and Blue, is borrowed from Francis Scott Fitzgerald, who originally intended to give it to his cult novel, Gatsby the Magnificent, characteristic of the tensions that marked this pivotal moment in American history.