Meeting Molly Crabapple: A Future Exhibition

This month, I had the pleasure of visiting the studio of Molly Crabapple in preparation for  an exhibition that I’m curating for the fall of this year. She’s an artist, writer, and activist who has created some extraordinarily whimsical yet powerful prints and posters confronting political and social injustice around the world.

We started by looking at some of Molly’s most recent work, prints that combine historic and fantastical elements. The two-color silkscreen poster here shows a nude woman wearing a dramatic pompadour and cat’s eye sunglasses; she holds a cigarette in one hand as she emerges from a bombshell, an image that evokes a sense of imminent destruction. The bomb reads, “Was there another Troy for her to burn?,” confirming that this figure represents Helen of Troy, the most beautiful woman in the world according to Greek mythology, and the indirect cause of the Trojan War.

There’s so much range to Molly’s work and this is best displayed in her posters calling for solidarity and community. The one that captivated me the most was Molly’s image of Breonna Taylor, an unarmed 26-year-old Black woman who was fatally shot by police after they forcibly entered her home in Louisville, Kentucky, on March 13, 2020. Taylor’s death sparked nationwide protests over policing and racial injustice during the summer of 2020 that still resonate. Molly’s poster brought me back to this period of social unrest during which many people turned to art to humanize those diminished or villainized by the media. The poster was carried in protests throughout the streets of New York that summer. But in Molly’s studio is a single, miniature print of it, a small but potent reminder of a pivotal moment in the history of racial justice in America.

Posters are typically intended to convey messages to the wider public rather than serve as works of art for collectors. In this sense, they are an inherently democratic medium. Molly’s work demonstrates her intense awareness of this concept; her posters, carefully focused on the central theme, are clearly designed to play a practical role in the lives of ordinary people. I’m excited to work on an exhibition that allows visitors of Poster House to further explore Molly’s meaningful and powerful artistry. 

Utopia in Our Time: The Posters of Molly Crabapple will be on view at Poster House between November 2025 and April 2026