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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 1960’s and early 1970’s.
The student movement at the time arose to demand free speech amongst students but as the U.S involvement in the Vietnam War grew, the war became the main target of student protests.
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.'
The poster is estimated at £100-200 (+BP) For more information about this lot, please contact James Forster: [email protected]
01743 450 700 | 