Political cartoons of Pat Oliphant on view at U-M

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The University of Michigan Clements Library and the Ford School of Public Policy will dive into the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist Pat Oliphant.

The Clements exhibit puts Oliphant's cartoons in conversation with historic examples of political satire from America's past, exploring the role that art plays in democratic culture. Within the display are caricatures of Richard Nixon, Bob Dole, Ross Perot and George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, among others, all on view through mid-December.

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Oliphant participated in annual residencies at U-M's Wallace House Center for Journalists from 1990 to 2016 and sketched, covering the presidencies of Lyndon B. Johnson through Barack Obama.

"Starting in the 1990s, Pat Oliphant did an annual week in residence at Wallace House for Journalists here at U-M," said Paul Erickson, director of the Clements Library. "During that time, he created sketches of important figures from American political life. Those sketches inspired staff at the Clements to think about how visual satire works, what it can do, and what purpose it serves in our political culture."

The library's collection of Oliphant's work is much larger than what is represented in the exhibit, requiring the curatorial team to make choices based on things like content, condition and size.

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"We tried to select sketches of people that would be familiar to most visitors, and that would include people from across the political spectrum," Erickson said. "All of them are men as many of the women leaders that Oliphant sketched were not from the U.S., which was outside of the scope of the exhibit."

The Ford School exhibit focuses specifically on its namesake, Gerald R. Ford, through Oliphant's lens in observance of the 50th anniversary of Ford's presidency.

The exhibit, on view at the Ford Library through the fall, features panels loaned to the school from the National Archives and Records Administration.

According to the National Archives, the exhibit "examines how Ford rose to the challenge of the office by exploring some of the difficult decisions that defined his administration and shaped his legacy, including granting clemency to draft dodgers, pardoning Richard Nixon, providing aid for Vietnamese refugees, responding to the Mayaguez crisis, managing Cold War relations with the Soviet Union, and refusing to bail out New York City."

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