Exhibit Closes: ...Like It’s 1999: American Popular Culture in the 1990s

William J. Clinton Presidential Library and Museum
Little Rock, AR

The decade of the 1990s was a prosperous time throughout the whole world. In the United States, memories of the decade brings up images of grunge bands, Beanie Babies, neon-colored track suits, and the rise in popularity of the home computer and the World Wide Web.

This exhibit will relive the golden, hopeful years that came after the fall of the Berlin Wall and before 9/11. It was a decade without a serious enemy: Communism had been defeated, Russia was our friend, and even Viet Nam was turning to capitalism. And despite the first World Trade Center bombing, the Oklahoma City Bombing and the Unibomber, the American people didn’t take the threat of terrorism in the United States very seriously.

Through this lens of positivity and prosperity, we will examine popular culture and will introduce the decade by focusing on a few significant events that influenced attitudes and popular culture in the US: