Not One of the Boys: The Psychedelic Posters of Bonnie MacLean
May 14, 2022 - November 27, 2022
Old City Hall
Bonnie MacLean was just fine with designing handbills and taking tickets at her husband’s music venue, The Fillmore. But a falling out between husband Bill Graham and poster artist Wes Wilson plunged her into the psychedelic art world of San Francisco in the mid-1960s. It was MacLean who stepped in to create posters promoting the bands who would become iconic with the counterculture movement of the time. MacLean initially borrowed from the Art Nouveau style of Wilson, but soon developed her own designs, featuring elaborate plumes, curving letters, and stoic faces. While MacLean was not recognized among the “big five” Haight-Ashbury poster artists who came to be associated with the iconography of the counterculture scene – Wes Wilson, Stanley Mouse, Alton Kelley, Victor Moscoso, and Rick Griffin – she stood out as one of the only women in the field. This exhibit pulls from the Museum’s incredible collection of psychedelic music posters from 1967.
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- Bonnie MacLean; The Who, Loading Zone, 1967; Offset lithograph; 21.25 x 14 in. Publisher: Bill Graham Presents, San Francisco. Whatcom Museum Collection.
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- Bonnie MacLean; The Yardbirds, The Doors, 1967; Offset lithograph; 21.25 x 14 in. Publisher: Bill Graham Presents, San Francisco. Whatcom Museum Collection 1978.01.83.
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- Bonnie MacLean; Eric Burdon and the Animals, Mother Earth, Hour Glass, 1967; Offset lithograph; 21.25 x 14 in. Publisher: Bill Graham Presents, San Francisco. Whatcom Museum Collection 1978.01.47.
The Whatcom Museum acknowledges that we gather on the traditional territory of the Lhaq’temish – Lummi People – and the Nuxwsá7aq – Nooksack People – who have lived in the Coast Salish region from time immemorial. The Museum honors our relationship with all of our Coast Salish neighbors and our shared responsibilities to their homeland where we all reside today.
