American Sampler: Activating the Archive

This exhibit offers a rotating selection of artifacts, artworks, and archival documents as a living installation that illuminates the strategies, visual vocabularies, and effective methods of protest. Materials include Freedom Rider testimonials, GI and war veteran resistance materials, printed matter from the Black Panther Party, courtroom records from the Chicago Seven Conspiracy Trial, pacifist statements, and more. These are juxtaposed with art and documentary materials by various artists, mounted on and around a 40-foot tall wall in the museum’s Vertical Gallery and extending into the café.

This exhibit is a partnership between the University of Michigan Library and the University  of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA). Artist, curator, and researcher Julie Ault — recipient of the inaugural UMMA Labadie Artist Research Residency — developed this immersive investigation into the architecture of American protest in close collaboration with Julie Herrada, curator of the library's Labadie Collection, one of the world’s largest repositories of materials documenting political dissent and social movements.