UPM book about R. Crumb in Museums

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I was happy to hear that The Comics of R. Crumb: Underground in the Art Museum has been submitted to the University Press of Mississippi by the Editor, Daniel Worden. It looks to be a great collection of different views on the way Crumb is represented in exhibitions.

My own contribution, Viewing Crumb: Representations of R. Crumb in Art Museums, discusses what role Crumb plays in contemporary art and in a wide range of museum exhibitions, such as High & Low (MoMA, 1990), Masters of American Comics (Hammer & MoCA LA, 2005), Compass in Hand: Selections from the Judith Rothschild Contemporary Drawings Collection (MoMA, 2009), The Phonus Balonus Show of Really Heavy Stuff (Corcoran Museum, 1969) Underground Classics (Chazen Museum, 2009), and Graphic Masters: Dürer, Rembrandt, Hogarth, Goya, Picasso, R. Crumb (Seattle Art Museum, 2016). The chapter also explores Crumb’s influence on contemporary feminist artists both negative (Trina Robbins) and positive (British artists Margaret Harrison and Rebecca Warren).

R. Crumb. God Wants me to Draw. Ink drawing on placemat. (2003). Collection of MoMA. Displayed with a Fritz the Cat book cover in the exhibition Compass in Hand:Selections from the Judith Rothschild Contemporary Drawings Collection .

R. Crumb. God Wants me to Draw. Ink drawing on placemat. (2003). Collection of MoMA. Displayed with a Fritz the Cat book cover in the exhibition Compass in Hand:Selections from the Judith Rothschild Contemporary Drawings Collection .

[Update 12/2020] In July, 2019 I participated in a roundtable discussion of this book at the Comics Studies Society’s annual conference at Ryerson University in Toronto, July 25 -28. The book includes contributions from José Alaniz, Ian Blechschmidt, Paul Fisher Davies, Zanne Domoney-Lyttle, David Huxley, Lynn Marie Kutch, Julian Lawrence, Liliana Milkova, Stiliana Milkova, Kim A. Munson, Jason S. Polley, Paul Sheehan, Clarence Burton Sheffield Jr. , and Daniel Worden. Preorder now for May 2021 release.

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New Article on Malcolm Whyte and the founding of the Cartoon Art Museum

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Catalog cover Zap to Zippy 1990

Catalog cover Zap to Zippy 1990

"A Collaborative Journey: Malcolm Whyte, Troubador Press, and the Cartoon Art Museum, San Francisco" will be published in the Fall issue of the International Journal of Comic Art, and is currently available on Academia.edu.

The longest running independent museum of comic art, the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco, was forced out of its space in September 2015, and is still looking for a home. This is the story of the museum's founder, the author and publisher Malcolm Whyte. His amazing career began in the Navy when he and a partner started Troubador Press, which began with greeting cards and grew to high quality coloring books illustrated by Greg Irons, Larry Todd, and Edward Gorey, In the mid-80's he founded the Cartoon Art Museum, and was the director from the opening in 1988 through 1992. Key exhibitions and catalogs are discussed. Following this he moved back into publishing with the Cottage Classics books. These were illustrated by artists like S. Clay Wilson, Maxon Crumb and Spain Rodriquez. Often these publications were coordinated with exhibitions.