Welcome to Docs Populi
dedicated to documenting and publishing oppositional artwork of the late 20th century

"This is how history is gathered and refined. And it explains why authors continue to write new books on subjects that have been
exhaustively covered before, whether it’s the McCarthy era, the civil rights movement or the Vietnam War.
Information, especially information about sensitive subjects, tends to seep, rather than pour out."

-Jonathan Mahler, New York Times, 11/1/2015, responding to criticism about his research on the hunt for Bin Laden.

Books and published essays
All Of Us Or None: Social Justice Posters of the San Francisco Bay Area, Heyday, 2012 (author)
Agitate! Educate! Organize! - American Labor Posters, Cornell University Press, 2009 (co-author)
Chinese Posters: Art from the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution,
Chronicle Books, 2007 (co-author)
Visions of Peace & Justice: 30 years of political posters from the archives of Inkworks Press, 2007 (editor)
Revolucion! Cuban Poster Art, Chronicle Books, 2003 (author)

New World Coming: The Sixties and the Shaping of Global Consciousness, (illustrated essay), Between the Lines Press, 2009
Ten Years That Shook the City: San Francisco 1968-1978 (illustrated essay, City Lights Books, 2011) 
"Red in black and white: The New Left printing renaissance of the 1960s – and beyond," essay in Peace Press Graphics 1967-1987: Art in the Pursuit of Social Change


Book reviews

Review of The Social and the real: Political Art of the 1930s in the Western Hemisphere, in Americas, January 2007
“Can icons be owned? The curious case of Che Guevara’s image,” review of Che's Afterlife: The Legacy of an Image. In A Contracorriente, Autumn 2009

Review of Miniature Messages: The Semiotics and Politics of Latin American Postage Stamps , A Contracorriente Spring 2009


Presentations and exhibitions

Article about posters in "Crosscurrents" exhibition at S.F.'s Museum of the African Diaspora, 12/12/2013
Posters used to teach about the struggle against apartheid, New York Times Nelson Mandela obituary, 12/8/2013
Unpublished letter
to SF Chronicle about Cesar Chavez photos and art neutrality

"Women hold up half the sky" - Bay Area women's posters of the 1970s and 1980s, exhibition at Local 123 Gallery :|: catalog of posters :|: review in Berkeley Daily Planet
Exhibition at the Berkeley Historical Society - Up Against the Wall : Berkeley Political Posters from the 1960s

Chinese Posters: Art from the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, U.C. Berkeley Institute of East Asian Studies, 1/28/2009
Solo exhibition of posters, University of San Francisco Law School, 3/2008-7/2008

"Cuban Poster Art and the Spirit of Revolution," University of Oregon 2008
"Database of American Labor Posters," Society of American Archivists, 2008
"Latin American Political Poster Art," Emory University, October 15, 2008
"Archives of Dissent," panel discussion at U.C. Berkeley 9/18/2008 - YouTube
"The role of the WPA in building American printmaking," presentation at Reviving the New Deal forum, City College of San Francisco, 2008
One Struggle, Two Communities:  Late 20th Century Political Posters of Havana, Cuba and the San Francisco Bay Area, Exhibit at Berkeley Art Center, , 2003



Web articles and postings

"Cataloging as Radical Practice" - the community-building role of creating catalog records, SRRT newsletter March 2014
Ex Libris: Bookplates from Cuba's Biblioteca Nacional José Martí, AIGA, 2011
Motorcycle parking blues - an animated complaint
"The Clark Kerr (mis)quote Adventure : A journey into conventional wisdom, casual scholarship, and librarian redemption," essay, 2010

"Posters about Ecology and the Environment Before and During the 1970s," Electronic Green Journal, Fall 2010
"Cranking It Out, Old-School Style: Art of the Gestetner," AIGA Voice 10/19/2010
"Meshed Histories: The Influence of Screen Printing on Social Movement
," AIGA Voice, 5/29/2009

"Privatizing the Commons: The Commodification of New Deal Public Art,"
AIGA Voice, 5/29/2009
Rockwell Kent essay on the democratic nature of silk screen printing, 1942
"Poster collection chronicles counterculture movement," interview in Oakland Tribune 8/7/2008
Circa 1920 religious posters found in wall of my home

Poster of the British slave ship Brookes, 1789
Interview with Lincoln Cushing about political posters in PLAZM magazine
"A librarian champions political poster art," Library Journal Academic Newswire, 5/31/2007
"Red all over", article in AIGA Voice on U.S.-China-Cuba graphics
Bancroftiana
article on 1930s UC antiwar images and archives (pdf)
Unprocessed social movement collections at UC Berkeley
A brief history of the "clenched fist" image
H.K. Yuen Archive of San Francisco Bay Area Social Movement History
Origins of the Black Panther Party logo
1970 UC Berkeley antiwar poster workshop archive
Latin American poster collections at the UC Berkeley Bancroft Library
Recent books on political poster art
Stop the Olympic Prison poster, 1980 Winter Olympics
"Socialist Ideals: Early Political Activism at UCSD" 2005

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all material © Lincoln Cushing Docs Populi - Documents for the Public

updated  1/1/2023