Voices of the People: 110 Years of Street Stickers from Around the World
Opening September 17, 2026
Selections from the People’s History Archive (USA) and Hatch Kingdom Sticker Museum (Germany)
In 1776, the Declaration of Independence asserted that a people could claim the authority to govern themselves. Two hundred and fifty years later, that radical proposition still reverberates—debated, challenged, and reinterpreted across generations. This exhibition examines one of the most nimble forms of expression in that ongoing dialogue: the publicly placed sticker. Like the printed broadsides and pamphlets that circulated in the late eighteenth century—most famously Thomas Paine’s Common Sense—stickers operate as accessible, reproducible forms of public persuasion, designed to move ideas beyond formal institutions and into daily life.
As the United States marks the 250th anniversary of independence, the exhibition invites viewers to consider how freedom has been defined, defended, denied, and demanded across time. From early twentieth-century pro-labor “stickerettes” and 1960s-era anti-war slogans to contemporary calls for racial justice, Indigenous sovereignty, gender equality, environmental protection, and immigrant rights, the stickers gathered here demonstrate that independence has never been a static achievement.
At the same time, the language of independence is not uniquely American. Across the globe, movements for self-determination have used adhesive graphics to assert autonomy and resist oppression. By placing U.S.-based stickers in conversation with international examples, the exhibition situates the anniversary within a wider history of struggles over power, rights, and belonging.
The original stickers in this exhibition were intended for the streets, not a museum. And yet, what they have lost in immediacy, they have gained in testimony: proof for future generations that someone, somewhere, cared enough to draw or print a handful of stickers—or a thousand—and believed that even the smallest act might help change the world.
Curated by Catherine Tedford, and Oliver Baudach,
Exhibition will be available for class visits beginning August 27, 2026.
People’s History Archive
Catherine Tedford
I first noticed stickers by chance in 2003 during a trip to the former East Berlin, where the streets are splashed with creative and powerful images and messages on paper and vinyl. Since then, I have become obsessed with meandering through various cities to see what sorts of treasures I can find. For several years, I collected stickers right off the streets, peeling them off by hand and tucking them into notebooks to bring home, scan, and catalogue. In 2008, I began acquiring original, unused stickers, typically combing through alternative bookstores, anarchist book fairs, and May Day celebrations. The approximately 18,000 stickers I have collected—some also arriving as gifts from friends and strangers—come from over twenty countries and date from the early 1900s to the present day. My offer to donate the entire collection to the Library of Congress as a bequest in 2028 was accepted within days of my initial inquiry.
In 2009, I met Oliver Baudach, director of the Hatch Kingdom Sticker Museum in Berlin, and the following year, he and I collaborated on our first joint exhibition of street stickers drawn from our collections. In 2013 and 2017, faculty research grants from the German Academic Exchange Service provided funding for us to develop two additional exhibitions: Re-Writing the Streets: The International Language of Stickers and SHE SLAPS! Street Stickers by Female Artists. Both premiered at SLU and traveled to colleges and universities across the United States. Oli and I have also co-curated Inspiring | Controversial | OBEY! Silkscreen Prints and Stickers by Shepard Fairey.
In 2015, the Council of Independent Colleges provided funding to create the Street Art Graphics digital archive in JSTOR, a free, open-access international digital library of arts and sciences. To date, over 5,200 stickers from our collections have been individually scanned and catalogued.
Several exhibitions drawn from my collection have been presented over the past twelve years. Early iterations of Paper Bullets: 100+ Years of Political Stickers from around the World were presented at Hatch Kingdom in the mid-2010s; a much more ambitious exhibition of the same title was later shown at Berlin’s Neurotitan Gallery. Likewise, the first iteration of Voices of the People! was presented at the Woody Guthrie Center in 2024-25; an expanded version drawn from both my collection and Oli’s is currently on view at vlog.
My edited volume Paper Bullets: 110+ Years of Political Stickers from around the World will be published by PM Press in the winter of 2026-27. In it, I have written extensive histories of “stickerettes” or “silent agitators” produced by the Industrial Workers of the World in the early 1900s, stickers protesting the war in Vietnam and Southeast Asia during the 1960s and ’70s, and stickers created by the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) during the HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1980s and ’90s. In addition, seventeen contributors—historians, activists, artists, scholars, and journalists—have each written about stickers in ways that animate historical moments and extend their political urgency, from Nixon-era politics and Ukraine’s Euromaidan protests to the work of the Guerrilla Girls, CrimethInc., and Dignidad Rebelde.
Hatch Kingdom Sticker Museum
Oliver Baudach
I became interested in stickers when I was a boy living in Speyer, Germany, in the early 1980s. When I was fourteen, I bought a wallet from Skull Skates—the cheapest thing in the store—but inside was one of the best skull stickers I have ever seen. I took every opportunity to take it out and show everyone how cool I was. After a while, my mom started to make a little extra money, and I could buy some of the hip streetwear. Wearing these clothes made me feel special and revolutionary. As I grew older, I gained courage to ask for stickers at stores and also started to order stickers from punk rock bands like the Misfits and the Ramones through catalogues, zines, and concerts.
After graduating from school, I moved to Berlin in 2000 to work in a high-end streetwear shop. When the brands sent their collections, there were always sticker promotions, and I would pick out the best ones. As I began thinking more seriously about stickers, I noticed there were a few books and pop-up exhibitions related to stickers. When I Googled “sticker museum,” however, nothing came up. I decided to open my own mail order business in 2007 and launched the Hatch Kingdom Sticker Museum in 2008 in the Friedrichshain district, with early support from Carhartt. Over the next fifteen years, the museum operated at three different locations in Berlin.
In addition to the permanent collection, I have organized a number of special exhibitions at Hatch Kingdom and beyond. The first, Oversized & Underpriced, launched in 2009 and invited fifty contemporary international street artists to create drawings, stencils, and silkscreen prints on enlarged “Hello-My-Name-Is” stickers, with proceeds benefiting Skateistan, the first skateboarding school for children in Afghanistan. Subsequent editions of the series used enlarged Deutsche Post and USPS mailing labels as their canvas, and the exhibitions have traveled to Hamburg, Cologne, the Stroke Art Fairs in Munich, and the Superplan Gallery in Berlin. The most recent edition, Operation Baked Beans, featured thirty original artworks designed as labels to wrap around 2.5 kg cans of baked beans. I have also curated exhibitions at Converse Shoes’ CONS Art Space and at SO36, one of Berlin’s most celebrated alternative underground venues, as well as in galleries and alternative art spaces in Montréal, Paris, Frankfurt, and Moscow.
Today, Hatch Kingdom functions as an independent, non-profit alternative art space. Since fall 2023, it has operated as a Sticker Museum Studio, presenting highlights from the collection as a permanent exhibition organized by themes—skateboard culture, streetwear, music, and street art—with stickers framed and displayed floor to ceiling.
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