International Memory of the World Register Liberation Graphics Collection of Palestine Posters 2014-13

1.0 Summary Documentary Heritage Being Nominated The Liberation Graphics Collection of Palestine Posters (Liberation Graphics Collection) comprises approximately 1,700 posters plus related paper ephemera, created by Palestinian and international artists in solidarity with the quest for Palestinian self-determination. These documents cover a critical time period in Palestinian history— the second half of the twentieth century, when Palestinians organized and asserted themselves under conditions of exile and occupation. The Palestine poster genre is unique in world art and a much-overlooked feature of Palestinian cultural heritage. Furthermore, the posters themselves are important repositories of primary data on Palestinian political and social history. They provide a unique lens through which audiences can gain insight into the aspirations, attitudes, and perspectives of the people involved in the events of contemporary Palestinian history, recorded as those events occurred. The Liberation Graphics Collection represents the core of the Palestine Poster Project Archives, http://www.palestineposterproject.org, which holds paper and/or digital images of more than 9,100 posters by some 1,800 artists from more than 50 countries. Inscription of the Liberation Graphics Collection is sought so that the posters can be conserved, organized, and prepared for acquisition by a Palestinian institution capable of maintaining them in perpetuity, ideally, in Palestine.

2.0 Nominators 2.1 Name of nominators (persons or organization) Dr. Salim Tamari; Dr. Rochelle Davis; Amer Shomali, M.A.; Dan Walsh, M.A.; Catherine Baker, M.Ed. 2.2 Relationship to the nominated documentary heritage Dr. Tamari is a senior fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies (IPS) and the former director of the IPS-affiliated Institute of Jerusalem Studies. He is editor of Jerusalem Quarterly and Hawliyyat al Quds. Dr. Tamari is professor of sociology at Birzeit University and an adjunct professor at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University. He is a member of the Palestine Poster Project Archives Advisory Board. Dr. Davis is an Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology in the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, and she is also the Academic Director of the Arab Studies Program. MOW Nomination/Liberation Graphics Collection of Palestine Posters

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She is a member of the Palestine Poster Project Archives Advisory Board. Mr. Shomali is a Ramallah-based artist active in the production, promotion, and preservation of a wide range of media including film, posters, and painting. He holds an M.A. in animation from Bournemouth University, UK, and a B.A. in architecture from Birzeit University, Palestine. Mr. Shomali received the Said Foundation Award (United Kingdom) in 2011 and the Young Artists Award (Egypt) in 2013. He is a member of the Palestine Poster Project Archives Advisory Board. Dan Walsh first began studying Palestine posters in the mid-1970s during his Peace Corps Morocco Arabic language training. He has an M.A. in Arab Studies from Georgetown University (2012) and he is the curator of the Palestine Poster Project Archives. Catherine Baker is a writer who has published on a variety of topics, including a 2013 article on Land Day posters for the Mondoweiss news blog. She has an M.Ed. from the University of Virginia and contributes to strategic planning and the development of written products related to the Palestine Poster Project Archives. She is a member of the Palestine Poster Project Archives Advisory Board. 2.3 Contact person(s) Dan Walsh, owner and curator, Palestine Poster Project Archives 2.4 Contact details Name

Address

Dan Walsh

Box 2863 Silver Spring, MD 20915 USA

Telephone

Facsimile

Email

703 599 8320

N/A

[email protected]

3.0 Identity and description of the documentary heritage 3.1 Name and identification details of the items being nominated If inscribed, the exact title and institution(s) to appear on the certificate should be given. The Liberation Graphics Collection of Palestine Posters Private Individual Compendium Silver Spring, MD This documentary heritage comprises approximately 1,700 works on paper—posters plus related materials (e.g., books about posters, exhibit catalogs, newspaper articles on the posters, posters-as-postcards) that cover an approximately 30-year timeframe (1967 to late 1990s) and comprise an encyclopedic, aesthetically MOW Nomination/Liberation Graphics Collection of Palestine Posters

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presented record of contemporary Palestinian life.

3.4 History/provenance “Looking at these posters is like reading a diary of the Palestinian nationalist movement,” reporter Ori Nir wrote in an article published in 2003 in the Israeli daily, Ha’aretz (see Bibliography). Mr. Nir was describing his reaction to a collection started almost by accident by Dan Walsh while living in Morocco in the 1970s, and which now forms the core of the largest archives of its kind in the world. From 1974–1976, Mr. Walsh served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Marrakech, Morocco. Incidental to his study of the Arabic language, Mr. Walsh began collecting Palestine posters with Arabic captions. (A description of this early collecting is provided in his master’s thesis, pp. 1-2. See Bibliography.) Mr. Walsh initially became interested in these posters owing to their graphic content and began sharing them with others through lecture presentations to college classes and community groups. In 1982, the American-Palestine Education Foundation, with the support of the late Edward Said, awarded Mr. Walsh a small grant to cover the costs of having approximately 300 Palestine posters professionally photographed for display in a portable slide show, which Mr. Walsh used in subsequent presentations. In 1983 Mr. Walsh founded a new business, Liberation Graphics, through which he assisted nonprofit and activist groups in creating and disseminating posters and other graphic resources. In the process of running Liberation Graphics he art-directed posters in solidarity with Palestinian groups and activities and he continued to collect Palestine posters, display them, and speak to audiences about the story they told. As word of Mr. Walsh’s presentations spread, he began to receive unsolicited posters directly from artists and from individuals who wanted the posters they owned to be preserved as part of a larger collection. In 1999, the Ruth Mott Foundation awarded Mr. Walsh a Community Arts grant to underwrite the costs of electronically conserving all the Palestine posters that he had acquired since 1974. Some 1,700 posters and related paper miscellanea were then digitally scanned. Low-resolution and high-resolution images of all the items were prepared and stored on a total of 18 archival-quality CDs. Mr. Walsh continued to acquire posters, and his efforts eventually resulted in the Palestine Poster Project Archives, which holds both paper and digital images of more than 9,100 posters by some 1,800 artists from more than 50 countries. New posters, artists, and collections are added continuously. The main intellectual product of Mr. Walsh's graduate thesis was to discover that when Palestine posters historically dispersed in a variety of physical settings and catalogued under a wide number of rubrics (e.g., Muslim, Arab, Middle East, Jewish, Israeli, Holy Land, Levant) are consolidated under a single heading, an entirely new and pedagogically innovative genre emerged: the Palestine poster. The material electronically conserved under the Ruth Mott Foundation project are collectively identified, within the Archives, as the Liberation Graphics Collection of Palestine Posters; it is this subset of posters which is proposed for inscription in the Memory of the World Register. In a review of these posters published in a 2003 article in the Washington Post, arts editor Philip Kennicott wrote, “it is an impressive and dogged bit of collecting, a comprehensive catalog of the iconography of Mideast MOW Nomination/Liberation Graphics Collection of Palestine Posters 3

politics, and a compendium of political art, some of it mediocre, some of it brilliant.” The posters in the Liberation Graphics Collection were created by Palestinian and international artists in solidarity with the goal of Palestinian self-determination. All these posters are pre-digital; that is, they were created prior to the emergence of the Internet and so were originally produced exclusively for printing and for circulation in hard copy. Posters are “graphic ephemera”—printed in small quantities, often on cheap paper, for immediate posting on walls or plastering on fences and buildings. The Palestine posters in the Liberation Graphics Collection would not now be accessible if Mr. Walsh had not obtained them while they were still available, sought out publishers and artists, tracked down individuals rumored to be holding onto private collections, and built up relationships over the years with artists and organizations around the world who have helped him in his search. Through Mr. Walsh’s salvage anthropology effort, a unique cultural narrative told in a unique medium has been preserved.

4.0 Legal information 4.1 Owner of the documentary heritage (name and contact details) Name

Address

Dan Walsh

Box 2863, Silver Spring, Maryland USA 20915

Telephone

Facsimile

Email

703 599 8320

N/A

[email protected]

4.2 Custodian of the documentary heritage (name and contact details if different from the owner) Same as above 4.3 Legal status Mr. Walsh is the owner of all the works-on-paper in the Liberation Graphics Collection and of the CDs containing high resolution digital images of the original works-onpaper. 4.4 Accessibility Describe how the item(s)/collection may be accessed. As mentioned in Section 3.3., the majority of the posters in the Liberation Graphics Collection may be viewed at: http://www.palestineposterproject.org/original_posters The original posters are stored in the Palestine Poster Project Archives, which is located in a private residence. This location is unsuitable for public access. However, all requests for access by scholars, researchers, and journalists to date have been MOW Nomination/Liberation Graphics Collection of Palestine Posters

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honored. 4.5 Copyright status Mr. Walsh has legal ownership of the works-on-paper in the Liberation Graphics Collection. He does not own or seek any copyrights. Any/all copyright claims lie with the respective artists or publishing organizations. Images of the posters are presented at the Palestine Poster Project Archives Website under “fair use” principles.

5.0 Assessment against the selection criteria 5.1 Authenticity Posters in the Liberation Graphics Collection were acquired in the following ways: direct acquisitions from artists or publishers; acquisitions from an event for which the poster was produced; gifts from individuals’ personal collections; trades of duplicates; and purchases by Mr. Walsh directly from the artists or publishers or via auction houses or private sales. Many of the posters feature the artist’s signature as well as the logo of the publishing organization(s). Mr. Walsh has corresponded with authors and publishers of many of the posters in the Liberation Graphics Collection to validate their provenance and to obtain bibliographic details. Characteristics such as typeface, ink, paper, size, colors, media, images, and language(s) of text(s) are among the elements studied to authenticate the posters. All relevant information obtained by Mr. Walsh is included on the website at the individual page for the relevant poster. Duplicates of some posters in the Liberation Graphics Collection are held in national repositories such as the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, Columbia University, the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam, and Georgetown University in Washington, DC. Duplicates of other posters in the Liberation Graphics Collection occasionally appear for sale at auction houses such as Kedem and Swann. These parallel collections and sales of duplicates validate the authenticity of the posters held in the Liberation Graphics Collection. 5.2 World significance The posters in the Liberation Graphics Collection document Palestinian responses to invasion, war, displacement, diaspora, occupation, and imprisonment, as well as Palestinian self-assertion and resistance, during the second half of the twentieth century. The posters also convey Palestinian expressions of culture and art. The primary significance of the posters is that they preserve a unique telling of the Palestinian narrative. Collectively, the posters tell the Palestinian version of their history and allow others, now and in future generations, to study and learn about a critical time period of Palestinian history. MOW Nomination/Liberation Graphics Collection of Palestine Posters

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This Liberation Graphics Collection is similar in terms of global cultural relevance and artistic breadth to the Russian Federation posters of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, inscripted in the Memory of the World in 1997. 5.3 Comparative criteria 1 Time The posters in the Liberation Graphics Collection have a two-fold importance: (1) they represent a key era in the evolution and maturation of Palestine poster art and (2) they provide primary documentary data on the contemporary history of Palestine. These two points are addressed separately below. The evolution and maturation of Palestine poster art The modern poster tradition emerged in the 1870s with the invention of lithographic technology, which enabled inexpensive, mass-produced color printing. Early posters were created primarily for commercial purposes, but the format also became important as a tool for political advocacy. By the mid-twentieth century, several major political poster genres had emerged, particularly those of the Spanish Civil War, revolutionary Cuba, Nicaragua’s Sandinista movement, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the People’s Republic of China, Zionist colonialism, and Palestinian nationalism. All but one has faded away; only the Palestine poster genre endured to the twenty-first century and continues to flourish. It is also the only political poster tradition of the twentieth century to transition to the Internet. The Liberation Graphics Collection provides evidence that in the second half of the twentieth century the Palestine poster genre served as an extraordinary source of inspiration for artists from a diverse range of geographic locales, political affiliations, nationalities, and aesthetic perspectives. Both Palestinian and non-Palestinian artists contributed works to this genre, and many of the posters in the Liberation Graphics Collection include original iconography, slogans, designs, and typographic treatments that have been adapted and recreated across cultures, geography, and time. The role of the Palestine poster as documentary evidence of the contemporary history of Palestine The Palestine posters in the Liberation Graphics Collection were produced during a key period in Palestinian history commencing with the Six-Day War of 1967, when Palestinians were organizing themselves in response to the loss of land and the resulting displacement and diaspora. In the aftermath of the 1968 battle of Al Karameh, the Palestinian nationalist movement embraced the poster as a major internal and external communications medium. Over the next thirty years, poster art became an integral part of Palestinian visual culture. During this period Palestinian artists produced posters in profusion and many graphic centers of excellence emerged. Palestinian organizations of all sizes, missions, and locations within the diaspora routinely published posters. A variety of international artists also produced works in solidarity with the Palestinians.

Viewed collectively, the posters in the Liberation Graphics Collection create a narrative of Palestinian culture and history in the latter half of the twentieth century, as told by the participants. Viewed in chronological sequence, the individual posters become the frames of an exceptionally detailed documentary film of Palestinian MOW Nomination/Liberation Graphics Collection of Palestine Posters

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aspirations, events, politics, and culture. 2 Place All of the posters in the Liberation Graphics Collection are dedicated to a particular place—historic Palestine. Many of the posters feature map images of this land area. Many include elements of culture specific to the land of Palestine such as the people’s traditional dress and embroidery; agricultural products identified with the land such as olives and oranges; and icons of Palestinian statehood including the modern flag and the national colors. Because many Palestinians were displaced both within and outside Palestine by the 1948 Nakba (Catastrophe), ensuing wars, and the Occupation, the places depicted in these posters include refugee camps and diaspora settings—wherever in the world Palestinians continue to live and continue to express their Palestinian-ness and wherever the iconic struggle of Palestine resonates with other peoples. 3 People Hundreds of Palestinian artists are represented in the Liberation Graphics Collection. Some of the more prolific include: Ismail Shammout, Ghassan Kanafani, Helmi Eltouni, Tawfiq Abdel Al, Kamal Boullata, Adnan Al Sharif, Kamal Al Mughanni, Hosni Radwan, Abdel Rahman Al Muzain, and Sliman Mansour. The posters were published by a wide range of Palestinian institutions including, among others: • Committee for the Defense of Palestinian Prisoners and Detainees in Israeli Prisons • Democratic Cultural Action Committees (West Bank and Gaza Strip) • Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) • Palestinian National Liberation Movement (FATAH) • Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) • General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS) • Palestine Liberation Army (PLA) • Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) • Plastic Arts Section of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) • Solidarity Committee of the Palestinian Prisoners in the Occupied Land An equally wide array of international artists is represented in the Liberation Graphics Collection. Among the most well known are Marc Rudin (Switzerland), whose early solidarity with Palestinians earned him the honorific Jihad Mansour; the Italian comics illustrator Elfo (Italy); and the American/British woodcut artist Paul Peter Piech (United Kingdom). Many of the posters in the Liberation Graphics Collection were self-published by the artists, and others were published specifically for exhibits such as Down with the Occupation and Homeland Denied. A substantial portion were published by organizations outside of Palestine, including, among others: • Communist Party of Italy (PCI) • Dar Al-Fata Al-Arabi (Arab Children Publishing House) • Organization of Solidarity with the Peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America (OSPAAAL) • Palestine Human Rights Campaign (Washington, DC) MOW Nomination/Liberation Graphics Collection of Palestine Posters

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• The Arab League Many of the posters are thematically dedicated to particular groups of Palestinians such as freedom fighters, martyrs, women (as fighters, mothers, and workers), prisoners, children, and refugees. Individuals also are subjects of posters; for example, militant Dalal Mughrabi, Palestinian leader and philosopher Majid Abu Sharar, and PLO leader Yasser Arafat. Posters feature the literary works of Mahmoud Darwish, Fawaz Turki, Abu Salma, Tawfiq Ziad, and other Palestinian poets. In sum, the posters in the Liberation Graphics Collection create a picture of Palestinian society that is about much more than armed struggle. In the words of Yasser Arafat, quoted in a 1982 poster, “This revolution is not merely a gun, but also a scalpel of a surgeon, a brush of an artist, a pen of a writer, a plough of a farmer, an axe of a worker.” 4 Subject and theme The posters in the Liberation Graphics Collection graphically record artists’ and publishers’ perspectives on key events, topics, people, and attitudes related to the Palestinian people in the second half of the twentieth century. Examples of the subjects and themes referenced in the posters include the following: • Themes of return, Jerusalem, and homeland • Celebration of theatre, film, music, literature, architecture, poetry, textiles, and ceramics • Annual commemorations, such as the Nakba (May 15), Land Day (March 30), and the International Day of Solidarity With the Palestinian People (November 29) • Military events such as the battle of Al Karameh, the Tel Azaatar massacre, and Black September • Political events, such as the 1978 Camp David Accords, the declaration of the state of Palestine on November 15, 1988, and the First Intifada • Cultural issues such as housing, domestic violence, nutrition, and literacy • The experience of Palestinians living in refugee camps, in displacement, and under occupation • Solidarity with revolutionary groups and liberation movements beyond the region of Palestine including such locations as Chile, Cuba, Vietnam, and the Western Sahara; a special collection of this subset of posters may be found here: http://www.palestineposterproject.org/special-collection/palestinianexpressions-of-solidarity-with-other-countriesrevolutionsliberation As Maureen Clare Murphy wrote in a 2004 review for the Electronic Intifada: “The posters … present the [Palestine-Zionist] conflict in a way that no newspaper report or detailed history book can accomplish. They emphasize the human element of the conflict, the metaphysical as well as the practical aims and concerns of the people it MOW Nomination/Liberation Graphics Collection of Palestine Posters

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most severely affects: the Palestinians” (See Bibliography). 5 Form and style Palestinian political leadership never sought to centrally control either the internal or international production of posters. As a result, the Palestine poster genre has an inclusive democratic philosophy and aesthetic depth shared by no other category of political poster art. Artists from around the world have cross-fertilized their own creativity and national iconographies with those of contemporary Palestine— borrowing, fusing, and remixing and in the process creating perhaps the first truly global political iconography. Two examples may suffice: • In the 1979 poster, “Palestine: A Homeland Denied,” artist Thomas Kruze combines a Danish woodcut style with Palestinian iconography (white horse, dove, embroidery, flag). • A 1988 poster published by the American collective Roots, “From the Launching to the Uprising An Incredible Journey” (author unknown), features a photograph of a woman waving the Palestinian flag; that same year, artist Rene Castro re-mixed the image as a silkscreen for the poster, “In Celebration of the State of Palestine. ” In terms of form and style, the Palestine posters in the Liberation Graphics Collection represent the most creative political poster genre to emerge in the second half of the twentieth century—more influential and far-reaching than even the posters of the Spanish Civil War, which have traditionally been considered the pinnacle of oppositional political poster art. 6 Social/ spiritual/ community significance Speaking of the larger Palestine Poster Project Archives in which the Liberation Graphics Collection resides, Dr. Paul Thomas Chamberlin, University of Kentucky Assistant Professor in the Department of History, stated: [It] is a unique and invaluable resource for scholars and educators alike. It provides the most comprehensive collection of visual documents on Palestine poster art that I know of. These pieces are at the same time historical documents and works of art and their impact is striking, both for researchers like myself and for students seeking to learn more about the region. Taken together, they present a fascinating study of politics and art in Palestine over much of the last century (personal communications with Mr. Walsh). The posters in the Liberation Graphics Collection create a rich and textured portrait of Palestinians, very different from the caustic and superficial stereotypes with which the Palestinian were burdened subsequent to the Nakba. Keys and kaffiyehs, oranges and olives, horses and doves, poetry and embroidery, the Islamic crescent and the Dome of the Rock—these and other symbols, icons, and traditions of Palestinian identity are celebrated, preserved and legitimated in the posters. Inscription in the Memory of the World Register will allow the Liberation Graphics Collection, and all posters in the wider Palestine poster genre, to be more widely appreciated by dispersed Palestinian communities and to be recognized as the significant cultural resource they are for current and future generations of MOW Nomination/Liberation Graphics Collection of Palestine Posters

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Palestinians.

6.0 Contextual information 6.1 Rarity Hard-copy posters of the twentieth century were primarily published with public posting in mind—on the exterior walls of public buildings, hoardings, bus stop shelters, etc. The posters were intrinsically ephemeral, with most copies quickly destroyed after posting by rain, fading, vandalism, organized removal, or pasting over with other posters. Typically, only a few copies of any given poster would be preserved by publishers, artists, or the participants in the event that inspired their production. Many of the posters in the Liberation Graphics Collection are the only known surviving mint-condition copies of their particular run. The only other collection of Palestinian posters of comparable size and quality was assembled by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), during its time in exile in Beirut. However, this original PLO archives was destroyed (some sources claim looted) during the Israeli invasion of PLO headquarters in Beirut in 1982. 6.2 Integrity Most of the posters in the Liberation Graphics Collection are in pristine condition and have not been damaged by rolling, folding, or improper storage. Most have never been posted publicly and are entirely intact. All of the posters, and the related ephemera, are stored flat in archival-quality portfolios to maintain them in their original condition. Though the facility within which the portfolios are stored is far less than ideal, the portfolios themselves are a stable environment. Since they have not faded or deteriorated in any way, the posters present nearperfect records of the imagery, colors, texts, credits and styles employed by the original artists and publishers. So well-preserved are these posters that the critical lines of type printed at the bottom or sides of the posters containing artists’ credits, publishers’ names, and logos are still plainly readable. Because of their excellent condition, the posters are ideal for digital reproduction and analysis.

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