Dr. Isobel Harbison will present the extraordinary story of the woman who designed the Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas road sign, Betty Willis. From Willis’s beginnings in Las Vegas, to her art training in Los Angeles in the 1940s, to her work as a layout artist in the movie industry, to her ascent as one of Las Vegas’s principal neon sign designers during the 1950s and 1960s.
Working in a city dominated by the mob, and gathering around her a team of Black, Indigenous and Latinx workers, she designed the city’s most iconic Welcome sign – now one of the most famous images in the world – among many of the city’s other neon gems. And yet, how is it that Willis’s work is still barely recognized? Harbison’s talk will show materials that helped her uncover the story of this proto-feminist icon, including photography and film stills, architectural plans and models, newspaper archives, oral histories, and original interviews.
Dr Isobel Harbison is an art historian and a senior lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London. She writes for a range of art, film and literary publications. Her first book, Performing Image, was published in 2019 by the MIT Press. Her research in Las Vegas was supported through an Eadington Fellowship at the UNLV, and a Plympton/Writing Downtown Residency.
Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas: The Neon Legacy of Betty Willis and the World’s Most Famous Sign is her second book (Manchester University Press, Feb 2027). A book signing will follow the presentation.