During this talk, Isobel Harbison will present a history of the woman who designed the Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign – from her early life, her art training in Los Angeles, and her work in Las Vegas as a layout artist and principal sign designer at Western Neon during the 1950s and 1960s. Here, she designed the city’s most iconic welcome sign – now one of the most famous images in the world.

Harbison is an art historian and senior lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London. She writes for a range of art, film and literary journals and publications. Her first book, Performing Image, was published in 2019 by the MIT Press.

The William R. Eadington Fellowship program is sponsored by the University Libraries Special Collections and Archives and funds scholarly research into our collections on gaming and Las Vegas.