Revisiting the Lipstick, 50 years later

Bob Handelman

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In ___ We Trust, winner of the Lipstick Revisited competition, was unveiled on the mezzanine of the Beinecke Library this spring. The occasion: the upcoming 50th anniversary of Claes Oldenburg ’50’s Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks—perhaps better known on campus as the Morse College lipstick—which was conceived as a symbol of and platform for the protests then roiling Yale and the country.

Open to Yale art and architecture students, and held in conjunction with the course 1968@50: Art, Architecture and Cultures of Protest, the competition charged students with commemorating Oldenburg’s work. Cocreators Davis Butner ’19MArch (below center) and Evan Sale ’19MArch  (below right) hope to see their winning piece on the plaza someday. When they conceived the work, Sale says, they envisioned a chunky pile of coins that would look like a colonnade and reference the columns of Woolsey Hall, “calling attention to the role of building in establishing the university’s governing values.” The sculpture is in storage for the summer.