An American Beauty: Grateful Dead 1965–1995 is an exhibition of photographs curated by Ricki Blakesberg and Jay Blakesberg, presented at David Kordansky Gallery's New York location. Following a 2025 publication of the same name, the show features twenty-one large-scale and more than two dozen smaller photographic prints documenting the Grateful Dead from their early Haight-Ashbury days through the Jerry Garcia years. The exhibition includes work by photographers Jay Blakesberg, Adrian Boot, Suki Coughlin, Greg Gaar, Andy Leonard, Rosie McGee, Bob Minkin, Ron Rakow, Jon Sievert, Elizabeth Sunflower, and Kirk West, drawn from the Retro Photo Archive. This New York presentation marks its debut in the city, expanding on earlier iterations in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Las Vegas. The photographs capture the band, their audiences, and the broader countercultural movement they inspired, offering a portrait of connection, participation, and shared experience across three decades of touring and cultural transformation.
