Neala Schleuning poster collection

The Neala Schleuning poster collection includes a wide variety of posters, broadsides, and several menus collected by Schleuning in the course of her worldwide travels. The poster collection is a strong graphic collection reflecting her broad interests in women’s issues, American studies, and political movements. The items span approximately twenty years, with items dating from the 1970s through the 1990s. Some early posters represent social and political issues of the 1970s, such as the Women’s Liberation Movement and Nuclear Disarmament. A large number of broadsides advertise cultural events, such as plays, gallery openings, and Native American gatherings, many of which occurred in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota, where Schleuning lived. Through the 1980s and 1990s, posters display ongoing social and political concerns such as labor relations, health reform, and homelessness.

The collection is arranged in two broad geographic series, posters from domestic American events or those obtained from travels abroad. Series I. United States is arranged in topical subseries: Anarchist Gatherings, Anti-Nuclear Campaign, Cultural Events, Gay/Lesbian Issues, Labor Relations/Worker’s Rights, Native American Issues, and Women & Work (Women’s Liberation). The posters and broadsides represent various events that were held across the United States, including items from events honoring American icons Karen Silkwood and Leonard Peltier.

Series II. International includes posters and broadsides from nations around the world, from Africa to Central America to Asia. The Schleuning Collection contains a series of Russian posters honoring Soviet leader Vladimir Ill’ich Lenin and another series of Soviet propaganda posters, as well as two fine silkscreen posters from Sri Lanka. The collection also contains an impressive array of posters from two United Nations World Conferences on Women, held in Nairobi, Kenya (1985), and Beijing, China (1995), respectively. The two menus in the collection are placemat menus from McDonald’s restaurants in Russia and China.

Just as the items in this collection cover a broad range of topics and geographic locals, the artwork ranges from simple sketches to fine illustrations to photography; production methods range from limited silkscreen or letterpress to mass commercial printings. Likewise, paper quality of the posters varies from the type of cheap flyer one might see posted on a bulletin board to high-gloss, photo-quality sheets. The collection provides a good international overview for study of graphic design and the poster art of political statement.

The item list of posters provides the following descriptive details: poster title/slogan/primary text from graphics on the poster, location of event or place of publication, date (when known), poster size (in inches), color production, and format (broadside or poster). Additional details, such as multiple copies or artist, are provided as available.

Many of the posters contain text in languages other than English; translations are provided for most of these. Graphic descriptions have been provided for image posters without text. The posters are housed in flat files; oversize items have been identified with removal sheets and are housed separately.