1929: Martin Luther King's Birth, Great Depression, and Barcelona Expo

The year 1929 saw the birth of Martin Luther King Jr. on January 15, celebrated with a documentary on Sky Arte and a tribute day at the Museum of the City of New York on January 21, within the ongoing exhibition 'Activist New York'. King, born in the racist South of Georgia, became a preacher in 1953 and led the Montgomery bus boycott against racial segregation. In 1963, he delivered his 'I Have a Dream' speech before 200,000 people in Washington DC, and in 1965, the Selma march saw whites join despite police charges. The exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York explores anti-Vietnam War protests, including King's 1967 sermon at Riverside Church. Also in 1929, the Great Depression began with the Wall Street crash. Two months before Black Thursday, John Steinbeck published his first novel 'Cup of Gold'. His later works, including 'Of Mice and Men' (1937) and 'The Grapes of Wrath' (1939), emerged from the Depression. ERT Fondazione in Bologna is hosting a complete reading of 'East of Eden' across sixteen appointments from January to November at four cultural institutions. The 1929 Barcelona Universal Exposition on Montjuïc featured the iconic Barcelona Pavilion by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. That year also saw André Breton's second Surrealist Manifesto, the opening of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, and Virginia Woolf's feminist essay 'A Room of One's Own'. These events are chronicled in the permanent exhibition 'A Short Century: MACBA Collection' at MACBA.