By james art In June 1991, two members of the LGBTQ+ rights organization Act Up! Madison put on diapers, bibs, and frilly caps. They protested the denial of daycare services to an HIV-positive mother in Madison, and although their method was unusual, it drew attention through art.
Madison is known for its extensive history of protests. But art and various forms of self-expression are central to both social life and protest at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
a lot look back at the civil rights and anti-war protests of the 1960s and 1970s and characterize them as mere chants, marches, or the occasional sit-in. But there was also creation—from graffiti, music, paintings, performances, poems, and more, artivism became central to UW-Madison.
Since the Elvehjem building was built in 1966, soon to become the Chazen Art Museum, a plywood fence around it filled up with political graffiti and street art.
Messages such as “Where’s Lee Harvey Oswald now that we really need him?” were common on the fence, along with “Lock up McNamara, throw out Kai,” a reference to the South Vietnamese secretary of defense and prime minister. At its inception, Chazen already hosted UW-Madison’s protest art.
“Art has been used as a political tool, protest or otherwise, for propaganda or to convey some agenda,” Catherine Alkauskas, Chazen’s chief curator, told The Daily Cardinal. “In fine art and poster making, there are many ways that images can tell very meaningful stories.”
Artwork, whether intended to be political or not, is often embraced by a political cause, she continued.
Against the backdrop of the anti-war movement of the 1960s, UW-Madison students and faculty channeled their anger at police brutality through art.
Warrington Colescott, professor emeritus of printmaking and painting at UW-Madison, created a piece in 1969 called “Outside garden window” while teaching. Colescott depicts a protester being beaten and arrested by the police, with other protesters being driven away and an audience forming outside their homes in the suburbs. It is believed to be directly inspired by the anti-Vietnam War protests on campus.
This piece appeared as part of the 2018 Print in Protest exhibit at Chazen, highlighting the role of the UW-Madison Print Department in the school’s history of protest.
Decades later, during the Black Lives Matter protests of the summer of 2020, murals in Madison and across the country honored victims of police brutality and called for change. Both officially commissioned murals by the city of Madison and individual graffiti were found on walls and boarded up windows throughout the city.
Colescott’s work reflects the attitudes of yesterday as well as today. His art is timeless, demonstrating the longevity of action and activism against police brutality
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Besides visual art, protest can be created for the other senses, such as music and spoken word.
In Madison, Forward! Marching bandfounded in Act 10 protestedspent weeks playing around the Capitol in protest. since then the group was “dedicated to maintaining that unique fighting spirit of the protest movement in Wisconsin.”
During the #TheRealUW movement in 2016, UW students, alumni and faculty of color denounced the racism they were subjected to while students at UW-Madison, Chazen hosted a day-long exhibition called “Unhood Yourself: The Real” UW .”
“It will be impossible to ignore the energy and passion that each of the artists brings to Chazen,” the exhibit says press release read. “Here they will live in expression and represent the truth. No veils, no anonymity, no hood.”
In addition to spoken word performances, this exhibit included photography and collages by students who led the movement online, designed to “immerse” students in the everyday experiences of their classmates of color.
More recently, specific iconography and phrases, often in support of the pro-Palestinian movement, on protest banners become an object for confiscation by law enforcement officers.
And with the recent implementation of UW-Madison’s “expressive activity,” protest art may be in jeopardy, at least as long as it is within 25 feet of a university building.
Yet some are fighting to keep this tradition alive. The Arts Department administers the Artivism Scholarship for students who demonstrate an interest in activism through art. In the 2022-2023 school year, the grant funded 12 projects using a total of $12,400 and plans to reopen applications for the current school year later in the semester.
A student publication, the Madison Journal of Literary Criticism is a recipient of this subsidy many times over. Editor-in-Chief Landis Varughese told The Daily Cardinal that the effects of artivism, including the experiences and art of Palestinians during Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza, are critical to social change.
“[Art] makes the entry points to activism much more accessible because people might not be really inclined to read dense theory about political activism,” Varughese said. “For people who are halfway around the world who may not be able to fully understand [the Palestinians’] arguments firsthand, the way they can glimpse into their world even just for a second through art is truly powerful. And it might show us that we’re not that far off after all.”
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Annika Bereni is a senior staff writer and former special pages editor for The Daily Cardinal. She is a history and journalism major and has written in-depth news stories on campus, specializing in protest politics, free speech and historical analysis. She has also written for state and city news. Follow her on Twitter at @annikabereny.