On November 4^th, 2009, a year after the election of Barack Obama, artist Shepard Fairey was at the University of Southern California for a conversation entitled “Art, Culture, Politics.”  Fairey lent the Obama campaign his artistic design skills by creating the imagery and layout of the “Hope” and “Progress” posters.  This iconographical work, which now resides in the Smithsonian, was a crucial visual vehicle in Barack Obama’s mega-cultural ascendancy.