Things are gettin’ groovy at UALR.

The UALR Department of Art is exhibiting the Groovy Summer Show 2010 featuring original handbills and posters of rock bands from the 1960s and 1970s in Gallery III in the Fine Arts Building beginning Thursday, June 17, through Thursday, July 20. Admission is free.

Gallery Director Brad Cushman said the University’s permanent art collection houses more than 120 psychedelic examples of graphic design from the decade.

“A new wave of bands converged in the Haight-Ashbury district in San Francisco during the 1960s,” he said. “Their concerts were advertised using artwork with vivid colors, thick, distorted lettering and bizarre imagery.”

The collection features promotional materials for iconic rock groups such as The Velvet Underground, Jefferson Airplane, Sly and the Family Stone and The Grateful Dead.

Other works in the exhibit include pieces by three women painters working during the same era: Françoise Gilot, who had a nine-year relationship and two children with Cubist painter Pablo Picasso, and the late Elsie Freund, best known for her ceramics techniques and for hosting an art program, Summer School of the Ozarks, in her home in Eureka Springs from 1940 to 1951.

The collection also includes works by the late Martha Barber, a former UALR art professor known for her paintings as well as her costume and set designs for the UALR Opera Program.

For more information about the exhibit, contact Cushman at 501-569-8977. Gallery hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Monday through Friday.