Preserving Signs of Protest
Revisiting a 2020 program on how museums work to save, archive, and conserve protest signs
Los Angeles Black Lives Matter protests following the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and Ahmaud Arbery, Downtown Los Angeles, California, May/June 2020
Image courtesy Rob Liggins
Body Content
During the Black Lives Matter demonstrations of 2020, waves of posters surged high above the sea of chanting protestors marching down city streets.
Some appeared to be quickly made—a simple square of cardboard with “BLM” painted in block letters; “The world is watching” scrawled on a sheet of yellow poster board. Others displayed more elaborate messages and artwork, perhaps carefully constructed: rainbow script, drawings of fists, a stark white poster featuring black lettering that asked: “How many weren’t filmed?”
Though not typically meant to be saved beyond a day or a few days of protests, signs serve as an insightful record. As such, some museums, archives and institutions collect, archive, and display posters and protest materials like these, allowing future generations to study and learn from activism of the past. These signs will also serve as powerful testimonies of historical events, of how people felt about them, and of the political climate at the time.
However, preserving protest materials presents a unique set of challenges, from soliciting donations of signs and securing permissions from their creators, to the physical care that is required to archive hand-made signs. In a virtual talk led by Rachel Rivenc, head of conservation and preservation at the Getty Research Institute, in 2020, museum professionals from institutions around Los Angeles shared the strategies they use to protect not only the physical protest materials, but also preserve their historical significance for historians, scholars, and future activists to learn from.
Saving the Records of Protest
Cardboard boxes, for example, are not meant for longevity—but the material’s significance is elevated when someone writes a protest message on them, and preservation efforts should follow suit. “You need to approach it with the same care and concern that you would approach a work of art—more so because the materials are much more susceptible to deterioration because they were never meant to be kept in the first place,” said Shannon Brogdon-Grantham, photograph and paper conservator for the Smithsonian’s Museum Conservation Institute.
Brogdon-Grantham explained that “approaching it with care” means putting the materials into a stable environment, such as stable storage containers in a climate-controlled environment, to minimize the amount of handling and exposure to light and other pollutants and pests—all of which can cause delicate materials to break down faster. At the same time, the materials must still remain accessible to people interested in studying them.
While there’s huge value in saving originals, it’s now more affordable than ever to create digital reproductions (with the creator’s permission) of fragile materials, which allows institutions to share the materials widely without worrying about destroying them. Carol A. Wells, founder and creative director of the Center for the Study of Political Graphics, said she now preserves originals and also creates digital copies, which activists seem to appreciate just as much.
“[Digital reproductions] don't require special conditions. They can go in a food court, they can be held in a demonstration or in an outdoor festival because if something happens to them, it's $50 to replace it. If something happened to the original, you can't replace it,” Wells said.
Inclusive Perspectives
Anti-war march on the Pentagon, 1967, Charles Brittin. Getty Research Institute, 2005.M.11
Collaborating with protestors from BIPOC, LGBTQ, and other marginalized communities and ensuring their voices are heard is central to these conservation efforts. Museums must place the materials in context in order to interpret them appropriately; for example, posters displayed in exhibitions should have wall labels that explain why they were created (and by whom). This can most accurately and sensitively be done by including members of the communities these materials represent in the process.
“Museums cannot afford to re-traumatize the same community by doing exactly what we did oh-so-long-ago in the colonial fashion,” said Tyree Boyd-Pates, associate curator of Western history at the Autry Museum of the American West. “So having intentional staff who is already deeply connected in repatriation, and also making sure that a proper light is given to the sensitivity of the moment, guides the initiative at Autry.”
Appropriate contextualization of protest ephemera also requires archiving materials from opposition groups. The curators agreed that collecting protest ephemera from all sides of the political aisle is crucial when creating an archive that, they hope, will serve as a teaching tool for generations to come. After all, there are no protest posters from the center of the political aisle, Wells pointed out.
“The responsibility of the curator is to provide historical context when [the protest materials] are finally displayed,” Boyd-Pates said. “History will be the decider, and you just want to be on the right side of collecting history.”
