"Visual pollution. Sky trash. Litter on a stick. The junk mail of the American highway." That's how billboards are described on the website of Scenic America, a group devoted to "preserving and enhancing the visual character" of the country. But while preservationists deride the billboard, artists have long been intrigued by it for its role in American highway culture. (Besides, what artist wouldn't want a 300-square-foot canvas with a guaranteed audience?)
While artists have been using billboards since the 1960s, there's been a recent resurgence of interest in road-sign art. A number of independently organized billboard projects have cropped up over the past several years, appearing everywhere from Florida to California. The artist Anne Thompson has organized one such project, up now: the Missouri-based "I-70 Sign Show." She suggests that billboards have gained in popularity in the context of art because they "look like a quaint, outmoded medium in the digital world. In terms of art history, when communication mediums lose their functional currency, they tend to get picked up and re-examined by artists."
Here, four projects that can be seen around the country:
"I-70 Sign Show"
Anne Thompson's project brings artworks to I-70 — a highway that (in Thompson's words) "conjures ideas of the cross-country road trip" but that also features politically charged billboards bought by interest groups whose messages reflect an intriguing "culture-wars roadside debate." A new billboard by the artist Mickalene Thomas will be unveiled this week. Featuring two women seated against a backdrop of patchwork patterns, the piece examines appearance and female sexuality.
"Big Pictures"
Organized by the curator Brian Sholis, "Big Pictures" plays out on road signs across Cincinnati. The project, which is sponsored by the Cincinnati Art Museum, focuses on photographs by artists like Lorenzo Vitturi and Dawoud Bey and seeks to inspire "creative interruptions of daily routines." A recent photo by artist Sara Cwynar, up until Sept. 21, features an image of a toucan perched in a canopy of leaf-green Post-it notes, riffing on both the visual punning of ad imagery and on the office culture that's no doubt familiar to the commuters most often targeted by billboards.
"Art Everywhere"
Billed as "the largest art show ever conceived," "Art Everywhere" brings 58 noteworthy artworks to prominent spots across the country. (The New York Times covered it last spring.) The public was allowed to cast their votes for the featured works, which were drawn from a shortlist of 100 pieces owned by institutions like the Whitney Museum and the Dallas Museum of Art. (Edward Hopper's "Nighthawks" proved most popular.) The project's decision to democratize content is an intriguing one, since billboard viewers almost never have a say in what they see.
"The Manifest Destiny Billboard Trip"
Beginning last fall and ending in the spring of next year, 10 artists are installing their work along the Interstate 10 Freeway, which stretches from Florida to California. (T covered the project when it launched last fall.) The curators, Zoe Crosher and Shamim M. Momin, aim to question the problematic history of manifest destiny. Earlier this spring, Crosher and Momin's project inaugurated a series of road signs by the artist Sanford Biggers; the works reflect a journey Biggers took to northern Ethiopia, where the rapid construction of roads and highways is overtaking a traditionally nomadic lifestyle.
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