The University Art Museum at CSULB is having an opening reception for its new exhibition, PEACE PRESS GRAPHICS 1967-1987: Art in the Pursuit of Social Change, on Saturday, September 10th from 5 – 8 PM. The exhibition is part of Pacific Standard Time, a regional program funded by the Getty Foundation that involves more than 60 art institutions, all of which are presenting work created in the greater Los Angeles area between 1945 and 1980.
UAM’s exhibition is co-curated by UAM Associate Director Ilee Kaplan, and Carol Wells, founder and Executive Director of the Center for the Study of Political Graphics (CSPG).
Kaplan: We were invited by the Getty to submt a proposal. We had about a week to develop an idea and write the preliminary proposal. After considerable discussion, we decided that a graphics project would be most appropriate for us with our extensive works-on-paper collection.
Because both UAM Director Chris Scoates and I have a strong interest in art for social change and because it is well-represented in the UAM collection, we contacted Carol Wells at the CSPG. She suggested that we consider one of her archives–the collection of posters produced by the collective Peace Press. We thought that was a great and cohesive project. We wrote the first grant and received $57,000 for the installation. We wrote a second grant and received an additional $18,000 towards the publication of a catalog.
CSPG has an archive of over 80,000 political posters, mostly from the early 20th century to the present. Within that archive is a sub-archive of about 170 posters that were printed by Peace Press. We borrowed about 90 posters form CSPG and another 40 from a private collector. All of the posters we borrowed were originally printed by Peace Press between 1967 – 1987.
Wells: [Prior to Peace Press, activists used] mimeograph machines, gestetners, hand made signs and silkscreens. The first Peace Press poster made was a silkscreen to announce a day of Resistance to the draft. It is the first poster in the show.
The commercial shops, including union shops, were very conservative. Most supported the government unquestioningly. They supported the Viet Nam War and opposed all the liberation movements that grew out of the anti-war movement, including women’s liberation and gay and lesbian liberation. Some mortuaries in L.A. even refused to bury the dead if they were gay, and wakes were held in bars.
But Peace Press even went beyond this. If women worked in a print shop, they were doing reception or bookkeeping. Peace Press broke all the mainstream printers’ traditions by training women and people of color to run all aspects of printing.
Peace Press started in 1967 in an office in Westwood, but once they had an actual printing press which the founder, Jerry Palmer, a graduate student in physics at UCLA, put together from a box of parts, they started renting spaces to print the materials. They had to move often, sometimes because the Feds would visit the landlords. There was also a fire which the members suspected was arson.
Kaplan: We conducted 25 interviews with members of the Peace Press collective and their clients. We spoke to a few of the artists involved with making posters, like the photographer Don Farber who designed the Alliance for Survival poster. Henry Klein was both a member of the collective and designed a poster in protest of the arrest of two members of the American Indian Movement: Paul Skyhorse and Richard Mohawk. We spoke to poet Deena Metager, whose poster about her experience with breast cancer was, in my opinion, one of the more controversial images in the show, among many others.
We learned a lot about Peace Press and the posters through these conversations which was reflected in the video, on expanded labels, and in the catalog. The original interviews will also be sent to the Getty for research by future historians.
Wells: Artists are always central to every successful movement for social change. Unlike today, where everyone wants their 15 minutes of fame, many artists at the time did not sign their work. The cause was the most important thing. Also, it could have been dangerous for some people to put their names on these posters.
Bonnie Mettler worked at Peace Press along with Bob Zaugh. They designed a number of posters, including a beautiful one protesting Diablo Canyon’s nuclear power plant. The design – with a huge butterfly coming out of a cooling tower – was used for several other posters organizing around Diablo Canyon, including a benefit concert with Jerry Garcia, and another benefit concert with Jackson Browne and Graham Nash.
Poet Deena Metzger worked with designer Sheila Levrant de Bretteville and photographer Hella Hammid to do a powerful poster called “Tree,” which shows Deena embracing life after breast cancer. Don Farber, now a well-known photographer, designed the logo and poster for Alliance for Survival. John August Swanson did several posters dealing with the United Farm Workers, the war, and other topical issues.
Their political client list as a “whose who” in the progressive movement: The Black Panther Party, Chicano Moratorium, United Farm Workers, Woman’s Building, Feminist Women’s Health Center, Alliance for Survival, SDS, Resistance, National Student Center of Thailand, Free Angela Davis Committee, National Coalition to Support African Liberation, Nicaragua Task Force, Christopher Street West, National Organization for Women, Harriet Tubman Book Center, Social and Public Art Resource Center, New American Movement… There are a lot more.
While located on the campus of CSULB, the UAM is not a student museum. There are, however, opportunities for students to do interesting and important work there.
Kaplan: We had a research team comprised of students and volunteers. We began by grouping the posters into themes like labor, anti-war, feminists, environmental issues, global struggles, farm works, etc. The students worked on a timeline that delineated events that inspired the posters during the twenty years of Peace Press’ tenure. The students also did research on individual posters. They wrote short essays on posters that was published in the catalog. In addition, we had one student who developed a video about Peace Press that is in the exhibition. Another developed a series of education programs examining themes based on the posters on display.
Wells, an art historian, founded the CSPG in 1988.
Wells: It grew out of my passion for art and my passion for political organizing. I’ve been involved since high school. We now have more than 80,000 human rights and protest posters from the 19th century to the present, including the largest collection of post WWII posters in the US.
We don’t have samples of everything Peace Press produced. Several members kept things and donated them to CSPG. But we continue to find Peace Press posters in donations that come from around the country. Just 6 months ago we received a large poster donation from someone who lived in LA, and moved to NY. In that donation was one Peace Press poster we didn’t have, and its in the show now.
We are still fighting the same struggles–unpopular and illegal wars, pollution, immigrant rights, homophobia, sexism, nuclear power, workers’ rights etc. We need to realize that unless we keep fighting for peace with justice, things will get worse faster.
The posters also show that we did win some of the battles. We ended the war in Viet Nam. Angela Davis and Bobby Seale were freed. The posters show that people can make a difference. Too many people feel that nothing they do will have any effect. The posters show what can be done with collective effort and a commitment to try to leave the world a better place than it is now.
Posters are important because you run across them as you are going about your daily life, and they are in your face. They make you ask a question. They challenge you. A good poster will teach you something. But the very act of asking a question changes you. Asking questions is a radical act. Through exhibitions such as Peace Press, CSPG is reclaiming the power of poster art to educate and inspire people to action.
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Free parking permits will be available at Brotman Hall, right at the entrance of Lot 3. Parking permits are required.
The reception will include a performance by the Get Lit Players, a group of at-risk high school and college students who use traditional and contemporary spoken word as a way to address social issues. Learn more at GetLit.org.
Learn more about the University Art Museum at CSULB.edu/org/uam.
Learn more about the Center for the Study of Political Graphics at PoliticalGraphics.org.
Learn more about The Getty Foundation’s Pacific Standard Time initiative at Getty.edu/PacificStandardTime.
The Long Beach Museum of Art and the Museum of Latin American Art are both presenting exhibitions in connection with the Getty Foundation’s Pacific Standard Time initiative.