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Date: 6/26/2015
HOLYOKE – The art of the poster to convey political messages will be explored in a new exhibit in two locations in the city.
“Not in Anyone’s Backyard” will open July 2 and be on exhibit through Aug. 31 at the Holyoke Heritage State Park Visitor Center and the Holyoke Public Library.
The exhibit is part of a large collection of posters assembled by Stephen Lewis, a retired state employee and union official who explained to Reminder Publications the posters “reflect interests in my life.”
The posters are part of a collection of more than 5,400, and Lewis said the ones in this exhibit are either from or about Latin America. Lewis explained the title of the exhibit came from a state made once by a U.S. government official “that exemplifies the U.S. government attitude and policy towards Latin America for the last 100 years. The statement, about Latin America being geographically close to the U.S., was made to justify the U.S. government’s right to intervene in the affairs of any Latin American country. It has manifested itself in the covert backing of the coup against, and murder of, President Salvadore Allende of Chile, in the support of murderous dictators in much of Central and South America during the 1980s and 1990s while they slaughtered peasants, human rights activists and trade unionists, the more than 50 years covert attempts to overthrow the Cuban government and the overt economic boycott against that country, the support of Operation Condor also in the 1980s and 1990s when the military governments of Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Paraguay and Brazil formed a secret alliance to assassinate opponents in each others countries.” Lewis has been collecting posters for the past 15 years and has often picked them up through his travels to foreign countries or from friends who are overseas. He explained the tradition of using the medium of a poster to convey a political point of view is not strong in this country, but remains strong in others. He noted he picked some up during a recent trip to Spain and Denmark. “Italy is the poster capitol of the world,” he noted.
There are professional teams of people who go through Italian cities pasting new posters to wall, Lewis explained. The poster has been seen as a disposable medium, Lewis said, and once they are taken down and replaced by a new one, they can be difficult to find.
Today some of the organizations that create them keep digital files, but the actual posters are thrown away. Besides the posters depicting issues in Latin America, the exhibit has some American posters that are reactions to event taking place in Latin America.
Lewis is looking forward to having the exhibit in the library because of the diverse audience who use it. He said when he designed this exhibit – he has produced others based on a theme – he used many posters in Spanish because of Holyoke’s large Hispanic population.
This project is supported in part by a grant from the Holyoke Cultural Council, a local agency, which is supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency, and by Painters DC 35 and by Roofers Local 3.