Center for the Study of Political Graphics
The Center for the Study of Political Graphics (CSPG) is a United States non-profit, educational and research archive that collects, preserves, documents, and circulates domestic and international political posters relating to historical and contemporary movements for social change. From its base in Los Angeles, California, CSPG organizes travelling exhibitions, lectures, and workshops, and publishes educational material. Their website also hosts virtual exhibitions.
CSPG was founded in 1989. The archive currently contains more than 60,000 posters and has the largest collection of post-World War II social justice posters in the United States and the second largest in the world. Media and techniques represented include offset, lithography, linocut, woodblock, silkscreen, stencil, and photocopy. All prints are catalogued to aid researchers. CSPG’s traveling exhibitions are presented from a multi-issue and multicultural perspective, and tend to focus on current issues. For example, upon the death of Ronald Reagan, CSPG mounted an exhibition of anti-Reagan posters. In the wake of the 2006 Great American Boycott, CSPG organized a labor-themed exhibition. They are mounted at various galleries and other institutions, and are accompanied by translations and other material. In the last seventeen years, CSPG exhibitions have toured to more than 280 venues worldwide. CSPG also loans out prints to other institutions for exhibit.
CSPG depends upon the donation of posters to make this resource as representative as possible of the many historical and ongoing struggles.