Living Blues, a magazine that has long served as a forum for the voices of blues artists, has a story of its own to tell. An exhibition chronicling the Center-published magazine’s 30-year history is currently on display in the Barnard Observatory Gallery through November 22. Founded in Chicago in 1970 by a group of young blues enthusiasts, Living Blues has witnessed many dramatic changes over the past three decades, including a move from Chicago to Mississippi following its acquisition by the Center in 1983. While the face of the magazine has changed greatly over the years, its initial commitment to documenting African American blues as a living tradition has remained steadfast.

   Just as Living Blues views the blues as an ever-evolving art form, curator Susan Lloyd McClamroch sees the exhibition as a paean to an ever-evolving magazine. McClamroch, a former gallery owner who has curated other Center exhibits, views the magazine as “not just about documenting the blues, but an agent in the life of the blues.” In constructing the exhibition, she pored over 153 issues of the magazine to find the articles and photos that she felt best illustrated the magazine’s accomplishments over the years, and with this “graphic evidence” let the magazine speak for itself.

   The exhibition follows Living Blues from Chicago to Mississippi, spotlighting the magazine’s coverage of all facets of blues music--acoustic, electric, country, urban--while chronicling the life of the magazine. The structure of the exhibition--three display stations organized by decade--highlights the changing style of the magazine from its early typewritten and largely textual features to the highly charged, colorful layouts of the last decade. Illustrating this change most dramatically is the inclusion, in its entirety, of a recent photo essay of Junior Kimbrough’s juke joint in Chulahoma, Mississippi, by the noted blues photographer Bill Steber. Junior’s was a popular Sunday night excursion for Oxford residents until it burned to the ground last April, and the essay provides many Oxford residents with a visual tour of their shared past.

   While much of the exhibition documents the look and general direction of the magazine, several other features focus on topics covered by the magazine over the years. One is blues festivals, and another is the magazine’s long-time coverage of blues legend Robert Johnson. The enigmatic bluesman gained widespread popularity with the release of his complete recordings in the early 1990s, but Living Blues has long served as platform for cutting edge research on the bluesman. One of the most interesting parts of this exhibition is a police sketch artist’s rendering of Johnson, solicited by the magazine prior to the discovery of photographs of Johnson.

   The breadth of the magazine, indeed blues music, is suggested by the juxtaposition of photos of artists as diverse as the provocative soul-blues performer Bobby Rush and the Reverend Dwight “Gatemouth” Moore, who left a successful career in blues for the ministry back in the 1940s.

   Several other features demonstrate the magazine’s outreach to the blues community. The Living Blues Awards are presented annually, while the Living Blues Directory is issued every other year, a highly valued resource in the blues community. Spotlighted in the exhibition is the directory’s 1993-1994 edition, which won a Bronze Ozzie award, for excellence in magazine cover design; the cover shows the smoldering ruins of a recently burned blues club with the sign in the foreground ironically reading “The Sizzlin’ Hot Lounge.”