E-Mail This Article to a Friend It’s just a shot away The ’60s at the Rotenberg Gallery, contemporary African Art at PEM, and ‘Collected Evidence’ in Newton BY RANDI HOPKINS

December 6, 1969 has been called by some the day the ’60s died. At the Altamont Speedway, outside San Francisco, a concert headlined by the Rolling Stones went from flower-power love-in to the ultimate downer, with an audience member being stabbed to death not far from the stage and subsequent mass confusion and disillusionment among the free-love faithful. And this just four months after Woodstock (the first one, okay?). Boston installation artist extraordinaire Annee Spileos Scott has borrowed the title of the 1970 Albert & David Maysles documentary for her mixed-media-and-video project Gimme Shelter, which is opening at the very happening Judi Rotenberg Gallery Annex next Thursday. Spileos Scott’s exhibition explores two factions from the ’60s who misunderstood each other in pretty much every way — the flower children and the Vietnam War veterans — and opens the doors to reconciliation and healing between them.

Gimme Shelter’s elements include a wall mural, a wildly hand-painted 1970 VW Beetle that will be parked in front of the gallery on opening night and at other times throughout the run, and a series of powerful video interviews with Vietnam War veterans presented in a cage-like structure that conjures The Deer Hunter’s notorious "tiger cages" as it evokes the feeling of being trapped, both behind enemy lines and in one’s own memories and emotions. The installation completes the second season of remarkable collaborations between the Rotenberg Gallery and Boston’s VideoSpace Collective — an innovative operation started by Boston Cyberarts Festival founder and DeCordova Museum New Media Curator George Fifield — presented in the intimate second-floor "Annex" of the Newbury Street brownstone that houses the Rotenberg Gallery.

"What excites me about this series, and why we think it is so important, is that people are used to seeing video in a museum or tucked away in a dark corner," explains Abigail Ross, daughter of Rotenberg Gallery founder Judi Rotenberg and since January 2001 the gallery’s director. "Here, video can be much more accessible — it’s right on Newbury Street." Her collaboration with VideoSpace has been a rich one, and next year she intends to make the work even more available by presenting the series in the first-floor gallery space, expanding the landscape for video artists, enthusiasts, and soon-to-become enthusiasts in Boston.

Political, psychological, cultural, and geographical landscapes all figure in the Peabody Essex Museum’s new "Looking Both Ways: Contemporary Artists from Africa," which opens this Saturday. Organized by Laurie Ann Farrell, curator at the Museum for African Art in New York, the show brings together work by 12 artists originally from Africa who now live and work in the West, including Ghada Amer, who threads a mean needle, the sharp-eyed Allan deSouza, and the textile artist from another planet, Yinka Shonibare.

Curated by artist Therese Zemlin and opening at the New Art Center in Newton next Friday, "Collected Evidence: Regeneration and Containment" explores regeneration and renewal as embodied in nature, art history, and religion, with work by Phyllis McGibbon, Tanja Softic, and Zemlin herself. The show is one of three "Curatorial Opportunity Program" selections presented at the New Art Center each year. Proposals for next year’s exhibitions are being taken now; the deadline is April 26, and the phone number is (617) 964-3424.

"Gimme Shelter: Annee Spileos Scott" is at the Judi Rotenberg Gallery Annex, 130 Newbury Street in Boston, April 1 through May 1; call (617) 437-1518. "Looking Both Ways: Contemporary Artists from Africa" is at the Peabody Essex Museum, East India Square in Salem, March 27 through June 20; call (978) 745-9500. "Collected Evidence: Regeneration and Containment" is at the New Art Center, 61 Washington Park in Newtonville, April 2 through May 16; call (617) 964-3424.