August 12, 2016
‘Hilloccio’ vs the ‘gas giant’: Suzzallo Library exhibit features powerful editorial cartoons from campaign 2016
David Horsey’s July 14, 2016, cartoon, in advance of the political conventions, seemed to capture the national mood. Used with permission.David Horsey / LA Times
Democrat Hillary Clinton is depicted variously as a prison inmate, a pilgrim clapped in colonial stockades or sporting a yardstick-long nose and labeled “Hillocchio.”
Republican Donald Trump is drawn as a bellowing wrestler, a baby in a stroller, a sweetheart of Russia’s Vladimir Putin or hovering in space as an orange-toupée-topped planet — a “gas giant.”
The editorial cartoons filling a ground floor exhibit in Suzzallo Library this political season are hard-hitting, even brutal. But, well, that’s the 2016 campaign and the year we’re living through.
The growing exhibit is the work of Jessica Albano, communication studies librarian for UW Libraries (who is about to become the new microforms and newspapers librarian) and library technician Barbara Miles — with help from student assistants Brendan Davy, Dikshya Dhakal, Evan Hochwalt, Heather Diaz and Kelli Stoneburner.
This is the fifth such exhibit, Albano said. She started curating them after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, depicting the aftermath and the world’s sympathy that quickly cooled when the United States began wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Albano and crew started following presidential campaigns in 2004 and have done an exhibit for each campaign since.
“It really is such a powerful way to get a message across,” Albano said. “It’s fun and appealing graphically, and it’s much faster to read a cartoon than an op-ed piece in the New York Times.”
Suzzallo Library’s Editorial Cartoons exhibit follows not only the campaign but also major stories of the year that affect the race. Among these is this poignant cartoon by Kevin Siers of The Charlotte Observer, following the police shootings in Dallas, Texas. Used with permission.Kevin Siers, The Charlotte Observer
The criteria for the exhibit is that the cartoons have to be taken from newspapers that UW Libraries has in its collections — either on paper or online. The student assistants check the papers daily looking for new additions, but the final decision on what gets included goes to Albano and Miles. Cartoons that don’t make the stand-up display are filed in a binder nearby that visitors can flip through.
The cartoons have to be related to the election, but if a major news issue crops up, as so many have this year — the mass shooting in Orlando, the Black Lives Matter movement or the Dallas police shootings — the exhibit follows those stories as well.
So while the exhibit shows the bitingly sharp humor of political crossed swords, it also reflects America’s deep sorrow following this year’s tragic moments — an example being The Charlotte Observer cartoonist Kevin Siers’ cartoon following the July police shootings in Dallas. A police officer at left and an African-American youth at right are both seen weeping into their hands over the caption, “America’s conversation on race and violence continues …”
Near the Editorial Cartoons exhibit is a smaller display of political campaign buttons from decades of American elections — including a Hillary Clinton “woman card” and vintage pins such as the one from 1972 that proclaims, “Nixon — Now more than ever!”
Albano and Miles do their best to keep the exhibit even-handed, but say they are finding that harder this year than in previous elections: “This year we’ve found that it is much harder to get cartoons critical of Hillary Clinton than of Donald Trump,” Miles said.
The UW has two Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist alumni, both of whom got their start at the UW Daily — David Horsey, now of the Los Angeles Times, and Mike Luckovich of the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Cartoons by both are plentiful in the exhibit.
Albano and Miles agreed that while there is humor in the biting satire of the editorial cartoons collected, the overall exhibit expresses a certain sadness as well.
“Editorial Cartoons — Election 2016” will be on display until Nov. 30, when, presumably, we will know who our next president will be — and thus, which candidate will be the subject of cartoons for the next four years.
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For more information about this exhibit, contact Albano at 206-685-1637 or jalbano@uw.edu.
Tag(s): Barbara Miles • Jessica Albano • Suzzallo Library • UW Libraries
