Summer Nights at the Oakland Museum of California

On Friday I went to the Oakland Museum of California for their Summer nights event. On the last Friday of the month, between April and October, admission to the museum is half price and there is a lot to see! I really enjoyed All of Us or None: Social Justice Posters of the San Francisco Bay Area, an exhibit that showcased screen prints and lithographs that were used in the area to publicize social justice issues.

My favorite poster was an image of Joan Baez sitting on a couch next to her two sisters, with a fiddle hanging from the wall on the left and a guitar hanging from the wall on the right. The slogan reads, “GIRLS SAY YES to boys who say NO,” and it was used as part of the Vietnam draft resistance. I like this poster because when I first read the slogan I thought it was some kind of abstinence propaganda, and then I noticed who the woman was on the left and saw that it was positioned amidst other draft resistance posters. Campaigns where women leverage their sexuality for a cause are intriguing and can be tricky, but in this case I think its pretty witty. (Here is an interesting blog post by a Well-Dressed Feminist on the poster).

These days the Bay Area is still seeing lots of imagery, most recently about the Occupy Movement. Have you seen any of Jon-Paul Bail’s posters around? Check out this video of him making Hella Occupy Oakland posters: