Comic Art in Museums reviewed in German Journal
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Keywords: comic art; museum; exhibition criticism; exhibition analysis
Kim A. Munson: Comic Art in Museums. Jackson: Mississippi UP 2020, 390 p., ISBN 9781496828071, USD 30,-.
(Translated from German) When comics scholar Kim A. Munson wanted to write her master's thesis on comics and museums at San Francisco State University's Department of History in 2008, she found herself under pressure to justify her work: in addition to theoretical literature and the International Journal of Comic Art, it was also the (scholarly) catalogs accompanying comics exhibitions such as Masters of American Comics (2005) that acted as the Holy Helpers in convincing her examining committee of the academic seriousness of her project. With this anthology, published twelve years later, Munson now intends to present the kind of introduction to the subject matter that she missed at the time: "an introduction to the history and controversies that have shaped comics exhibitions, who the pioneers were, different ideas about comic art exhibits around the world, how the best practices for displaying comics have developed and why, and how artists and curators have found ways to display comics that break away from the 'framed pages on the wall' format" (p.3). This statement of intent already indicates one strength of the nearly 400-page anthology: Perspective pluralism. In addition to Munson, 34 other people have contributed to the publication: they belong to different academic disciplines, write journalistically about comics, are comics creators themselves, and/or curate comics exhibitions. Trina Robbins combines all these facets in one person. She is one of six women who contributed to the anthology and is thus woefully underrepresented here. In 36 texts - a combination of essays, interviews, and exhibition reviews - the contributors approach different aspects of the genesis of the museum-worthiness of the medium of comics, a development that began in the USA as early as the 1930s. A total of 20 contributions are reprints of texts from the years 1942 to 2018. Unlike the German research literature on the related literary exhibition, which (ignoring comics) has come across as distinctly theory-based and -oriented, especially in the last ten years (e.g. Sandra Potsch: Literatur sehen. Bielefeld: transcript 2019), Munson's "curated selection" (p.5) sets other accents. She is interested in the history of comics exhibitions with particular attention to the history of reception and exhibition criticism.
Munson curates her material by organizing it into six thematic sections. Each section is preceded by an introductory passage. Irritatingly, these - although sometimes as long as seven pages and accompanied by illustrations - do not seem to appear in the table of contents. The first chapter, which is generally devoted to the phenomenon of comic art in museums and deals not least with the question of originality, is followed by an overview of the pioneering phase of comic exhibitions from 1930-1967 and the post-pop art phase from 1970 onward. Another section brings together texts under the title "Expanding Views of Comic Art: Topics and Display," which focus, among other things, on new presentation concepts and once-taboo topics. "Masters of High and Low: Exhibitions in Dialogue" highlights the controversial discussion of the survey exhibitions "High and Low: Modern Art and Popular Culture" (MOMA, New York, 1990) and "Masters of American Comics" (Hammer Museum/Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2005), especially with regard to the latter's critically questionable canonization, which was characterized as "all-male, all-white" with the exception of African American comic artist George Herriman (see p.8). The texts in the final section take a look at a number of contemporary exhibitions on individual comic artists, with a focus here on Art Spiegelman and Jack Kirby. Although the geographic focus of the publication is on exhibitions in the U.S., there are a few contributions on comic exhibitions outside North America, namely "I Exposicao Internacional de Historias em Quadrinhos" (Sao Paulo, 1951), "Bande dessinée et figuration narrative" (Paris, 1967), and on current exhibition trends in Japan and the Middle East. The compilation of comic museums and exhibition houses with a comic focus is also internationally conceived and encourages further research - which corresponds to the intention of the editor expressed in the introduction. Munson's intention to address students with this anthology is reflected not only in its overview character but also in its extremely affordable price.
Barbara Margarethe Eggert (Linz)
MEDIENwissenschaft, 38.1 (2021), pp. 51-52
