Psychedelic Leary drawing

Psychedelic Leary drawing

Timothy Leary, who died in 1996, was an American psychologist who became one of the chief proponents of the powers of LSD. Along the way, he was a prolific writer, lecturer and all around counterculture icon, as well as a very early adopter of the Internet.

His phrase "Turn on, tune in, and drop out" became one of the most well-known sayings of the 1960s. During that decade, he spent several years living in a mansion near Millbrook, N.Y., where he and many visitors would experiment with and document their use of LSD.

This image of Leary was drawn by one of those guests, and while it's not certain that the artist was under the influence of the hallucinogen, the style of the piece leaves little to the imagination.

The trustees of the Timothy Leary archives will have a gallery show in San Francisco on Sunday to let the public see some of the items contained in the more than 400 cartons of materials Leary accumulated during his lifetime. Leary's estate is trying to sell the archives and is hoping someone will buy the material and donate it to an institution like the U.S. Library of Congress. The archives were recently appraised and valued at more than $1 million.

Correction: This slide show originally had incorrect credits for photos 8, 9, and 16.

February 6, 2009 4:00 AM PST

Photo by: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News, of portrait by unknown artist

| Caption by: Daniel Terdiman

 

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