Mad Men at the Museum of the Moving Image: transport to 60s era New York in new show exhibit

There is no denying that Matthew Weiner created a monster when Mad Men‘s pilot premiered for the first time and everyone was like, “WAIT. WHAT THE &%$# just happened? This is the greatest show ever.” And after a pretty amazingly long run, the second half of the final season will finally premiere on April 5th on AMC.

Of course all Mad Men fanatics are bittersweet about the show’s final chapter, but there is also much to be celebrated in one of the greatest shows to air on television, thanks to the genius behind it all: creator Matthew Weiner.

In a new exhibit at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens (a real hidden gem!) Matthew Weiner’s Mad Men exhibit celebrates the show’s unique 1960s era with actual set design installations (Betty’s kitchen!), costumes worn by the cast (YES, Megan’s “Zou Bisou Bisou”dress is there), some pretty retro memorabilia, actual script notes from the writers and directors, and other various bits and pieces of the Mad Men series.

“These stories seem at times to be stories of long-lost world when the city of New York was still filled with a river light, when you heard the Benny Goodman quartets from a radio in the corner of a stationary store, and when almost everybody wore a hat. Here is the last of that generation of chain smokers who woke the world in the morning with their coughing, who used to get stoned at cocktail parties and perform obsolete dance steps like “the Cleveland Chicken,” who sailed for Europe on ships, who were truly nostalgic for love and happiness, and whose gods were as ancient as yours and mine, whoever you are.” –John Cheever, from preface of The Stories of John Cheever

In addition to the exhibit, a Required Viewing: Mad Men‘s Movie Influences will be screening films that inspired the show every weekend until April 26th. Some of the best have already passed including a screening of Vertigo with a Q&A with Matthew Weiner, but alas, there are still a few classics left: Dear Heart, The Bachelor Party, The Best of Everything, and The Americanization of Emily. These films “left a deep impression” on Weiner and helped shape Mad Men to be a narrative of America in the 1960s.

(via The Museum of the Moving Image)