Billboards in Art & Protest
When the billboard talks back: subvertising and culture-jamming, protest boards, Banksy, 'Three Billboards', and the bill-posting trade that named the magazine Billboard in 1894.
Part of Billboards
10 moments in this segment.
- - Subvertising and culture jamming. Activists and artists hijack billboards, the Billboard Liberation Front and Adbusters turn ads against themselves.
- - Banksy and the billboard. Street artists from Banksy on have used the billboard as a canvas for satire and dissent.
- - Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. The 2017 film made three roadside billboards the engine of a story, proof of the board's hold on the imagination.
- - Billboards that changed policy. From the Three Billboards-inspired real protests to Grenfell and #MeToo, activists reclaimed the billboard.
- - 'Bil's boards' - the magazine Billboard. In 1894 a trade paper for the bill-posting industry launched as Billboard Advertising, the boards gave the magazine its name.
- - The world's biggest billboards. From Saudi Arabia's record-breaking boards to Dubai's building-sized screens, the billboard keeps growing.
- - Protest and the civil-rights sign. Hand-lettered signs and boards carried the messages of the civil-rights movement into public space. The subject dates from 1968; this photograph was taken in 2019.
- - The billboard as protest. From civil-rights messages to modern political and social campaigns, the billboard has always been a way to shout in public.
- - 'Guns Are Prohibited' and message boards. Public-service and message billboards, from wartime propaganda to health warnings, have long shaped opinion.
- - Benetton's shock images. Toscani's Benetton boards, a dying AIDS patient, a newborn, made the billboard a site of moral argument.
