Wearing Buttons is Not Enough

Wearing Buttons is Not Enough

Monday, May 08, 2017 - Saturday, May 20, 2017

Location:
Colette Paris
213 Rue Saint Honoré
75001 Paris, France

The day after the French elections, father and daughter team Johan Kugelberg and Sofia Leilani Kugelberg are pleased to announce Wearing Buttons Is Not Enough, an exhibition of original protest buttons from the 1960s

The collection comes from the archive of Garrick Beck, co-founder of the Rainbow Gathering and life-long activist. As the son of Living Theatre founders Julian Beck and Judith Malina, Garrick Beck was at the epicenter of the civil rights movement, anti-nuclear activism, anti-Vietnam war activism and what was to become the hippie movement. During those heady days, he’d keep all the slogan buttons he was given at rallies, events, demonstrations and sit-ins.

Almost all of these buttons are relevant nowadays, 50-60 years later. Before social media, before Pinterest and Instagram, these slogans and graphics communicated beliefs person-to-person in Meatspace.

For this exhibition, Sofia Leilani Kugelberg has designed a pocket t-shirt that comes complete with an original vintage button. There is also a limited edition zine with a 9- button pack selected by Sarah. Pins manufactured by Pintrill are also available. The proceeds go towards the funding of the ongoing archiving of the history of the Rainbow Gathering.

Garrick Beck: “Wearing these, you got a lot of reaction. People reacted to buttons in those times. In the 1960s, if you wore a button, it was a statement, and people saw it. You wore it on the subway, or you wore it in the street, or in a store. People read what you had to say. It was a whole powerful type of expression.” Sofia Leilani Kugelberg: “As a teenager in 2017, I think these buttons are amazing and inspirational. It makes you want to get involved, get active, reacting and wanting to make change!” 

BOO-HOORAY exhibits both at home in New York City as well as internationally. We also stage collaborative exhibitions with the Hayward Gallery and Rough Trade in London, Tsutaya Daikanyama, Hysteric Glamour, and United Arrows in Tokyo, Galleri Operatingplace in Stockholm, Colette in Paris, PopMontreal in Montreal, Mishka Los Angeles, Printed Matter at both MOCA/LA and PS1/NYC, and Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, the New York Public Library, the Grolier Club, and Milk Gallery in New York.

Boo-Hooray exhibitions have included shows featuring Larry Clark, The Velvet Underground, Ray Johnson, Afrika Bambaataa, Jonas Mekas, Ed Sanders, Linder Sterling and Jon Savage, Spencer Sweeney, Houston Rap, private press vinyl, Wallace Berman, anarcho-punk group Crass, Jason Polan, Jack Smith, cult-filmmaker Ed Wood, and Situationist Times editor Jacqueline de Jong.

The exhibitions are drawn from cultural archives that Boo-Hooray excavates, organizes, and places in institutions such as Columbia University’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Cornell University’s Division of Rare Manuscript Collections, Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, and the University of Oxford’s Bodleian Library.