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.
