From The Michigan Daily by Audrey Shabelski
About 150 Ann Arbor community members gathered at the University of Michigan Museum of Art Saturday evening to hear a discussion between Julie Herrada, the curator of the Joseph A. Labadie Collection, and Julie Ault, a writer and artist specializing in the retellings of history. They detailed their collaboration on the new exhibit, “American Sampler: Activating the Archive.”
UMMA director Christina Olsen, the event’s moderator, began by asking each speaker what inspired their collaboration on the project. Ault said she was intrigued to work across different institutions of art and history.
“It was the invitation to work across the two institutions, the archive and the museum,” Ault said. “Also the university setting was really appealing to me because, whether it’s true or not, I always think people are learning, and they’re eager for diving into more information and reading and new experiences.”
Ault then said the exhibit documents the history of social movements and forms of protests.
“The focus, which developed over a long period of the (exhibit), is on methods of dissent that address ongoing social sociopolitical issues, but through a historical lens,” Ault said. “So I centered it on the (intersection of) Black freedom, civil rights, counterculture and anti-war movements from the late ’50s to the mid 1970s and the intense and often violent backlash that these movements faced from mobs, from the police, from the military and governmental authorities.”
Herrada then told the crowd it is becoming increasingly important for people to encounter the history of protests and how it connects to the present.
“There comes a point, and maybe this is that point in our country, where people have to have more exposure,” Herrada said. “They have to know that this is available, accessible, and this is our history, and we have to connect it to the present.”
Herrada spoke about Joseph A. Labadie, an anarchist union organizer with the Gilded Age Knights of Labor, who collected many of the materials presented in the exhibit. Labadie was a printer by trade and collected photos, letters, posters, flyers and other protest materials throughout his tenure. Herrada said Labadie collected this material and gave it to the University to expose the community to more radical thinking.
“(Labadie) knew it was valuable for history, and he knew that it documented his activities and those of his comrades and the movements, and he wanted it to be used by students and scholars, and he saved it,” Herrada said. “He felt like this would be the place for it, not because Michigan was radical, but because Michigan was conservative at that time and he thought, ‘Okay, well, they need a little bit of help.’”
Ault added she was excited to observe the many different forms of protests throughout history, saying they can guide future demonstrations.
“The other thing that I got very excited about — which is very evident in the Labadie — is that there is an abundance of effective forms of protest to look at,” Ault said. “These models are things that we see upstairs in the exhibition or material telling these narratives.”
In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Information graduate student Berkley Sorrells said she enjoyed the discussion because it touched on her interests within the library program and background working at museums.
“The role of an archivist is never neutral,” Sorrells said. “The decisions that archivists make have impact, and so being able to listen to someone who is so knowledgeable and has been doing this work for so long — listening to how that kind of interest can intersect with curation and museum work as well — is great because I worked in museums before I started this program here in libraries.”
Speakers concluded by reflecting on the importance of displaying the variety of artifacts. Ault emphasized the continuous study of history and its influence on the present.
“If you can see where the archive is a place for continuous use and connection and memory and reproduction, then it’s in a way timeless, because it’s always up for grabs, for interpretation,” Ault said. “One of the things I’ve obviously tried to do with the exhibition is not present it like, ‘Oh, this is just history,’ but to present it as active history. And that then feeds into thinking or knowing that the present is history in the making.”
Daily Staff Reporter Audrey Shabelski can be reached at audres@umich.edu.
Comments
Actions like this one....are there
anonymous (not verified) Sun, 02/08/2026 - 03:01
Youtube or Freetube it:
"1995MNOLFDirectAction"
via:
Dares2speakTV
Orgasm Liberation Front Surprised Minneapolis, MN in 1995
Info from that youtube channel:
"This is the most challenging direct action i carried out (with one friend). It is the culmination of several other direct actions where both I (solo) and a few others (twice) openly challenged gay assimilation politics, daring beyond our programmed fears to even speak up at all. Our challenges began in about 1992 from dissatisfaction with the national-serving group I had been involved in (which coerced a "passive" and I think middle-class-values-stuck [read: patriarchal --ed] kind of approach to the sex hysteria against intergenerational solidarity topics). Their whole tactic for responding to the attacks pushed by all manner of social control "outlet" felt to some of us to be way too self-defeating and dumb. Yes, we were naive to how politics "work", and yet, I still feel that this approach, if utilized amongst others, can have a positive effect! And certainly was one way to escape the MEDIA CONTROL that has continued to keep our side of the truth "under wraps".
"Of course, MEDIA CONTROL works in myriad ways to silence and keep "under wraps" MANY groups of people, and this is a lesson one can learn if you realize the value of prioritizing educating yourself on the MANY discrepancies and hypocrisies of our time (not that this is anything "new", as Black Folks and American Indians know only too well)."
Ed's not: The video covers the action, what was passed out (inspired by Hakim Bey!), and how ORGASM CRIES were made, by a young man using a megaphone and crashing the march, his friend passing out "poetic terror" flyers modeled on the 1993 March On Washington "BECAUSE" flyer --which he also attended, as "The Ghost of Boylovers Past, Haunting The Gay Assimilation March".
Note that the view counter says that most of the videos only have a very few who watched them, but I don't believe that at all, as I've seen youtube counters STUCK on numbers like "666" for people like Amanda Rodgers, and AZ mom who tried to bring nuance to the topic only to have fascists coming to her door (she is now armed).
So do keep that in mind! (I suspect that one of the main ways that the pentagon-started internet seems to fuck with people is to have people uncritically trusting their view counters, and then engineering our belief that "only a tiny number" are visiting! So many tricks!)
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