Anti-racism protest signs, murals destined for U.S. Smithsonian

Days into nationwide protests over the killing of George Floyd, demonstrators began to fill a tall fence in front of the White House with posters, flowers, paintings and photos in honor of black men, women and children who have lost their lives at the hands of police.

Placed on the recently renamed Black Lives Matter Plaza, the tributes have created a spontaneous memorial that are now being collected for a more permanent home at the Smithsonian Institution.

Graffiti artists and mural painters have designed visuals on the site where many protesters congregate to begin nearly nightly demonstrations in Washington.

Memorials have also popped up in New York where muralists decorated the city's Chelsea neighborhood, as well as cities around the world, including Nairobi, Karachi and Berlin. 

Block after block in Washington, office buildings and windows of upscale restaurants that normally cater to lobbyists and business executives have been sheathed in plywood to protect against the short-lived outbursts of arson and vandalism that struck the city's center earlier this month.

Levi Robinson, one of the many artists who got the call to design and paint atop the plywood, said he stumbled onto the idea of making his depiction of military medics.

"I decided to show black medics who serve in the military after speaking with some examples who were on site handing out water began to tell me their stories," said Robinson of his piece adorning a boarded-up exterior window of a restaurant on Black Lives Matter Plaza.

Aaron Bryant, a photography and social protest historian and curator at the African American History and Culture Museum, said unlike most of the protest artwork of the 1960s civil rights era, which were made by...