The album “Free to Be… You and Me,” released by Marlo Thomas in 1972, inspired a generation to think beyond gender stereotypes. Now, the Eric Carle Museum in Amherst is celebrating the “Free to Be...” project’s lasting legacy and impact in a new exhibition.

In “Free to Be... You and Me: 50 Years of Stories and Songs,” which opened to the public last Saturday, Nov. 16, and runs until Sunday, April 6, the Eric Carle Museum is showcasing artifacts that span from the project’s creation to a vision of what a modern-day “Free to Be…” might include.

As guests walk through the exhibition, they can listen to the original “Free to Be…” album on a Fisher-Price record player. As they continue, they pass illustrations from the 1974 “Free to Be…” book adaptation. Nearby are a few animation cels from the TV special, plus a glass case with artifacts like iron-on “Free to Be…” labels and a copy of the original book.

Continuing through the exhibition, there are also illustrations from “Free to Be… A Family,” a 1987 book of stories and poems that touch on topics like divorce, blended families, adoption, sibling jealousy, immigrant assimilation, and disability, among other things. (In 1988, Thomas also released a TV special by the same name, which featured a live broadcast connecting kids in New York City with their penpals in Moscow.) After that are illustrations from the 35th anniversary re-release of the original book, plus fan letters written to Marlo Thomas.

In the middle of the room is a period-appropriate TV (atop a very ’70s rug) on which guests can watch a nine-minute selection of clips from the original TV special, including “Boy Meets Girl,” in which two identical baby puppets, voiced by Marlo Thomas and Mel Brooks, try to figure out if they are boys or girls (Brooks’ character declares he must be a girl because he wants to grow up to be a cocktail waitress); the song “It’s All Right to Cry,” by Rosey Grier; part of “Atalanta,” about a princess who wants to travel the world rather than get married; “Parents Are People,” a song starring Harry Belafonte and Marlo Thomas; and the main theme song, in which children ride horses off a carousel and into the sunset.

Guest curator Margi Hofer said that “Free to Be…” was so important because it “helped to break down these stifling gender norms that were affecting kids’ lives at the time. It also promoted this vision of racial equity. What made it so impactful is that it was fun. It was all couched in this mode of entertainment, so kids were absorbing these messages without feeling like they were being prescribed.”

In 2020, Sara Bareilles released an updated version of the “Free to Be…” theme song, which guests at the Carle exhibition can listen to by scanning a QR code on a phone.

In her version, the phrase “where the children are free” is changed to “where the people are free.” She also fully overhauls two lines: “Every boy in this land grows to be his own man / In this land, every girl grows to be her own woman” becomes “Every child in the land, may you all understand / That you’re proud, and you’re strong, and you are right where you belong.”

Even though the project was radical for its time, associate curator and exhibition coordinator Isabel Ruiz Cano said, it still had to work within producers’ constraints. In the video for the song “Parents Are People,” Marlo Thomas was originally going to push a stroller with Harry Belafonte, but producers insisted that they push separate strollers instead, lest it be assumed that they were an interracial couple.

Likewise, Thomas said at a 2014 panel to celebrate the project’s 40th anniversary, when she screened the TV special for a group of ABC executives, they complained that the song “William’s Doll” “would make every boy in America a sissy–and ‘sissy’ wasn’t the word they used.”

In the original project, Ruiz Cano said, “There’s some conversation about race and intersectionality, but again, it was pretty basic. But you have to acknowledge what they were working with and who they were trying to connect with.”

Closing the exhibition is a commissioned artwork by illustrator Audrey Helen Weber, a nonbinary graduate of Hampshire College. (Weber also used to work at the Eric Carle Museum, which is on Hampshire’s campus.) The work, “Dress Up,” is meant to fill a gap in the original project – namely, gender expression – and features a multiracial collection of children in a variety of attire, plus a poem by the artist:

Free to wear the clothes I like, / Choose my hair without a fight, / Free to try it on and see, / How it feels to live as me.

Guest curator Margi Hofer said that she hopes that guests who grew up with “Free to Be…” will have “a really uplifting and nostalgic experience.”

“But more importantly,” she said, “I hope that those people who did grow up with it come away with a better understanding of the cultural moment that gave birth to ‘Free to Be…,’ particularly how the women’s rights and civil rights movements were affecting social change at that time. And I also hope people come away with an understanding that so many of ‘Free to Be…’s messages are timeless and important for us to think about today.”

Contact Carolyn Brown at cbrown@gazettenet.com.