Curator Kirsty Hassard says in the 1960s Italy led the way in creating nightclubs where teenagers and 20-somethings could enjoy themselves away from the gaze of parents.
Night Fever uses photos, artefacts to look at clubs such as the Palladium in New York. It was started in the mid-1980s by Ian Schrager and Steve Rubell, who had already had a huge success with their New York club Studio 54 in the late 1970s. Hassard says one change in the 1980s was the emergence of so-called superclubs and their function in celebrity culture."When big venues such as Studio 54 and the Palladium were at their peak there was a lot of focus on which VIPs went where each night. Club culture became commercialised in a way it really hadn't been before and the clubs were in the newspapers all the time."
"It's part of the museum's role to be the champion of those spaces. But aside from that it's just a wonderful trot through decades of clubbing. "Design matters as part of a club's vibe but that's always hard to capture. For me two of the most effective clubs which had that vibe were the Haçienda in Manchester, circa 1989/1990, and more recently Trouw which was in an old print works in Amsterdam. Sadly both are now gone."
Source: Entertainment Trends (entertainmenttrends.net)