Punk Flyers
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About this collection
This digital collection offers 2,091 images of punk flyers held by Cornell University Library's Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections. Cornell’s Rare and Manuscript Division offers deep collections on modern music, including a growing number of archives on punk and post-punk music and culture. The show and event advertising flyers in this digital archive are drawn from two of Cornell’s prominent punk collections: The Johan Kugelberg punk collection, which includes hundreds of fliers, posters, zines, original art and more, and the Aaron Cometbus Punk and Underground Press Collection, which includes punk, new wave, and hardcore flyers and other ephemera from the San Francisco Bay area and beyond.
Not all of Cornell Library's punk flyers have been digitized. The flyers in this digital collection represent only a portion of the punk flyers held across multiple archives within Cornell's Rare and Manuscript Division.
Historical context
Punk rock emerged in the mid-1970s from an intersection of underground music, art, film, fashion, and theater scenes in New York City and London, which coalesced and developed aesthetic and ethical principles that are still referenced in global artistic practices today. Punk’s artistic and political stance of resistance coupled with a do-it-yourself ideology that eschews professionalism and corporatization, inspired both creative expression and political activism. The flyers in this collection offer documentation of its evolution, participants, and regional variations.
Using the collection
Inquiries about research visits or other access can be sent to rareref@cornell.edu.
More information
- Collection steward
- Katherine Reagan, Ernest Stern Curator, Rare Books & Manuscripts
- Metadata creation
- Cornell University Library
- Funding
- Grants Program for Digital Collections in Arts and Sciences, 2016; awarded to Judith Peraino, Music; Tom McEnaney, Comparative Literature; Katherine Reagan
- Credits
- This collection overview was adapted from the digitization grant application and last reviewed in 2025.
- Collection sources