Each poster is distinct: A crimson-haired woman, eyes like the Cheshire Cat’s, sips a glass of wine. A meridian holds an apple on its axis, instead of a globe. A Japanese stone lantern sits in a garden of verdant layers. They’re colorful, minimalist, and unmistakably his. These works by David Lance Goines (1945–2023) for Berkeley institutions (Chez Panisse, the Berkeley Public Library, and the UC Botanical Garden, respectively) are part of a collection of nearly 5,000 objects now belonging to the Bancroft Library.
Donated last fall by the artist’s niece, Hannah Hoffman ’06, the collection not only includes commissioned work for local establishments, but also more personal pieces Goines created for friends and family. Once the collection is processed, the public will be able view items upon request in the Bancroft Reading Room. You don’t need to be a student, faculty, or scholar to access the collection, Bancroft director Kate Donovan says. “The only requirement is your curiosity.”
Goines was born in Oregon and learned printmaking as a teenager in Oakland. Soon after enrolling at Berkeley, where he intended to study classics, he was swept into the Free Speech Movement. He began printing leaflets for protests, as well as creating illustrations and calligraphy for the student political group SLATE. His agitprop got him expelled in 1964, a year into his studies.
In a commencement speech he gave to the classics department in 2012, Goines said his expulsion “was the single luckiest thing” that happened to him. “I was on the wrong track, trying to do things that I was not well-suited for; the FSM freed me to go where I ought to go.”
He didn’t go far, honing his craft at Berkeley Free Press before buying the print shop and renaming it Saint Hieronymus Press. Over the next decades, Goines’s posters would grace businesses and other organizations across Berkeley, and beyond. His work has been exhibited in museums including the Smithsonian, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. His UC Berkeley pieces include posters for International House, the School of Optometry, and the Bancroft Library.
Hoffman says the process of archiving her uncle’s work, which took more than a year, was an emotional one. “We’ve all had loss, but to grieve through that process was one of the biggest gifts I’ve ever received.”
Needless to say, Goines had a complex relationship with Cal. Hoffman says her uncle didn’t harbor animosity toward the school, but rather the administration; he was glad to make posters for the university and the students especially, she said. All the while, he eschewed bureaucracy, and according to her, bristled at institutions and rules. Smiling, she described him as a “nascent anarchist.”
Donovan hopes students are not only inspired by Goines’s finished work, but also the rough drafts and revisions in the collection.
“Nobody, whether a famous artist or writer, creates a perfect first draft. That doesn’t exist. There’s constant iteration,” Donovan said. “And I think that can be both very inspirational for students, and also really heartening.”
