海角大神

When the 2017 Women鈥檚 March concluded, what remained behind, stuck on fences and piled on sidewalks, were the thousands of posters that served as the visual expression of the marchers鈥� ire.

Museums, universities, and libraries across the United States collected signs from the march sites and put out a call on social media. Now these artifacts are being placed in archives and displayed in exhibitions.

At the Sutro Library, located on the campus of San Francisco State University, professors also use posters from the march as teaching tools. For many students, the preservation of artifacts from the Women鈥檚 March signals a shift toward preserving women鈥檚 history. 鈥淭o me, it means that the voices of women are no longer going to be silenced,鈥� says Scarlett Arreola-Reyes, a junior at the university. 鈥淚t means that future generations can see the efforts of women throughout history.鈥�

The New-York Historical Society and the Museum of the City of New York also sent out a call for posters, which are now on display in current exhibitions. Faculty from Northeastern University in Boston collected thousands of signs from the local march and added them to an online display titled 鈥淎rt of the March.鈥�

At the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the 鈥淕et with the Action鈥� exhibition explores 鈥渢he medium of the political poster as a way to communicate pressing ideas and organize and inform a wide audience,鈥� writes Joseph Becker, associate curator of architecture and design for SFMOMA, in an email. 鈥淕et with the Action鈥� displays political posters from the 1960s to the present.聽

For exhibition visitor Beatrice Charles, placing a Women鈥檚 March poster alongside posters from previous decades gives the march a historical context, she says, and shows that 鈥渨e鈥檝e learned so much, and we鈥檙e still fighting some of the same things we all were fighting a long time ago.鈥�