The Shrimp Festival Poster Controversy

On April 21, 2025, the Coastal Alabama Business Chamber announced that local artist Michael Swiger was the winner of the 52nd Annual National Shrimp Festival poster contest. It was Swiger’s first win, though he had competed in the contest multiple years.

However, on Friday, July 11, the Annual National Shrimp Festival committee announced that they were rescinding that decision and selecting a new one. The reason was that the winning poster was “similar in design to a poster from an event in another state in 2024.”

That said, both parties have stated that the withdrawal was “mutual.” Swiger has gone on to defend his piece. He claims that his intent was not to plagiarize the work and instead was an act of “appropriation.”

The committee has not announced the new winner, but said that it will do so soon. The festival is scheduled for October 2025 and is expected to bring over a hundred thousand visitors to the area.

But this leaves a simple question: Did Swiger commit plagiarism? For me, despite his protests, the answer is a resounding yes.

Understanding the Story

In 2024, the World Surf League World Tour held its Hurley Pro Sunset Beach competition in Hawaii. Sara Saffery, a local artist, created the poster for the event. It features a stylized image of waves crashing on the shore and a bird flying above it.

A year later, Swiger submits a similar poster, but the bird is replaced with a shrimp.

According to Swiger, some people noticed the similarities almost immediately. In an interview with AL.com, Swiger said, “In fact, when I made the post about winning the contest, I received compliments from other people who recognized the allusion to the Hurley poster.”

Though it is unclear who alerted the committee or why, it has since become aware of these similarities. They say that, after talking to the artist, they mutually agreed to withdraw the poster. They plan to announce a new winner shortly.

In addition to having the poster withdrawn, Swiger will not collect the $1,000 cash prize and other benefits.

Despite this, Swiger contends that he did not commit plagiarism and instead was “appropriating” the source material into his work. However, that argument doesn’t pass muster for several reasons.

The Problem with Appropriation

According to Swiger, he used the previous work to “create a new piece or message.” He cited one piece that used the Vincent Van Gogh painting Starry Night in a reinterpretation of Batman.

But there lies the first problem. Appropriation or homage requires that the audience be aware of the source material so that they can understand the reference. This can be challenging. We don’t live in a monoculture, and it can be hard to guess what the intended audience is and what it is not aware of.

However, it’s relatively safe to assume that most people have heard of Starry Night and are familiar with Batman. Those references will be broadly understood, and mashing them up does change their context.

Why would residents of Gulf Shores, AL, be familiar with the poster of a surfing contest that took place over 4,000 miles away? Even if some did get the reference, I would expect nearly the entire audience to be clueless.

But, even if the audience is familiar, I fail to see how this is a reinterpretation. While there’s some humor to be found in swapping the bird for a shrimp, these are two similar posters in meaning and intent. Both are meant to promote ocean-adjacent events in their respective states. The works serve an identical purpose.

In short, I wouldn’t say that Swiger’s work was transformative, especially after the Warhol ruling. Though copyright and plagiarism are different things, this case raises a lot of the same questions as the Warhol one.

But, even after all that, there’s still one major problem: Some elements are either traced or copied so closely as to be indistinguishable from a trace. This includes the lines in the top of the wave, the border below it, the splash under the animal and more.

To use Swiger’s own definition, many of the elements involve no alteration and are direct copies. In short, Swiger didn’t just mimic the style of the original poster; he copied elements of it directly.

All in all, this isn’t a case of two posters having similar designs. The copying here is much more direct, and his claims of “appropriation” aren’t likely to win many over.

Bottom Line

To be clear, appropriation art is a thing, and artists like Richard Prince have made careers out of it. However, such art is divisive on the best of days, and these are not the best of days for such art.

Obviously, I can only speculate as to Swiger’s intentions when creating the piece. However, even using his own generous standards, this poster crosses the line. He used both the layout and detail elements from a poster from an unrelated event 4,000 miles away when creating his poster. Even if he intended to pay homage to the original work, there’s simply no way most of his audience would realize that.

So, even if he entered this project with “100% pure and genuine” intentions, he clearly missed the mark. The proof of this is the backlash over the poster itself. When dealing with matters of attribution and content reuse, it’s the audience that sets the expectation, not the artist. The artist has to hope that they see eye to eye with their audience.

Here, that did not happen. The committee was right to withdraw the poster, and it would be wise for them to review their existing policies and see if they can strengthen their protections in this space. While this may have been a difficult case to detect, some due diligence might have helped them avoid this.

All in all, I disagree with Swiger’s arguments and think that his definition of plagiarism is overly narrow and that he doesn’t understand the issue at all. Even if I were to agree that his work was somehow transformative, that isn’t appropriate for this task.

Gulf Shores deserves a unique and stylish poster for its festival, not an “appropriation” of a previous work. Clearly, Swiger did not deliver that.