1960s Student Protest Poster to be sold at Auction

Halls will be offering for sale in their Country House and Asian Art sale on the 15th May a student protest poster from 1968.


04/04/2019     Latest News, Pictures

 

Halls will be offering for sale in their Country House and Asian Art sale on the 15th May a student protest poster from 1968.

Consigned by the vendor; she was a cataloguer at the Houghton Library which was a division of the Harvard University Library at the time of the student strikes during the second half of the 1960s and early 1970s. The student movement at the time arose to demand free speech amongst students but as the US involvement in the Vietnam War grew, the war became the main target of student protests. The poster is estimated at £100-200.

 

Lot 87, Country House and Asian Art Auction, 15th May 

 

Halls Fine Art Picture specialist James Forster says: ‘In an age of increasing emancipation and protest it is interesting to be reminded of the history of protest in the USA.  This fascinating memento from a seminal period in US history sees to capture the spirit of that generation of students and its simplicity of design seems to make it all the more striking’

The vendor quotes: 

'My poster was on a wall in Harvard Yard, the central area at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.  It was May 1968. The mood was not angry but excited, thrilled to have a purpose, and of course it was wonderful to sit or march around Harvard Yard in the spring sunshine after a hard winter.  It was a time when the world seemed new and wonderful, and there was as much hope as anger in the protests.  In Paris they were throwing stones.  At Harvard they were defiantly smoking roaches (spliffs) on the steps of Widener Library.
When the protests were over, the posters were taken down by the University grounds crew.  I was walking through Harvard Yard at the time, saw this last poster, and decided to keep it, in spite of its torn corner, in memory of an exciting time.'

 

For more information about this lot, please contact James Forster:

jamesf@hallsgb.com
01743 450 700 

 

 


 

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