Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Sedimenting Solidarity: Signs From The Madison Protest, Melissa Deann Seifert

Theses and Dissertations

The 2011 Wisconsin protest inspired the wide ranging production of handmade and commercially-produced signage. Five hundred signs were collected and preserved by the Wisconsin State Historical Society and others were obtained by the Smithsonian Museum of American History. Art historians and prominent art institutes have dismissed the aesthetic qualities of handmade signs, instead cataloging them as ephemeral historical artifacts. I argue that signs work similarly to other art forms in the modern era, such as advertisements and poster art, which have gained scholarly attention. This project uses the Madison protest as a case study in order to track the often …