NPG Herblock exhibit website

The extensive site was recommended by the Journalista today. It reproduces the art in the exhibit, but not the content of the computer kiosk. It's a good look at the exhibit for those who can't make it to DC as it's arranged like the exhibit is.

Herblock 100th birthday book coming

I was fortunate enough to attend a preview of the National Portrait Gallery's new Herblock exhibit today - I'll post about that in the next day or so - and met Ms. Jean Rickard, Herb Block's Girl Friday for decades. She mentioned a project that the Herb Block Foundation is doing next year. It's a book about Herblock with DVDs of 16,000 of his cartoons included. The book includes a 4,000 word essay by Herblock's former colleague at the Post, Haynes Johnson. It comes out on his 100th birthday, October 13, 2009.

Newspaper Guild Herbert Block Freedom Award

Dave Astor in "Another Award for Reporters Who Exposed Walter Reed Scandal," E&P Online, April 22, 2008, notes

"BBC Gaza correspondent Alan Johnston will receive the Newspaper Guild Herbert Block Freedom Award. That honor is named after renowned Washington Post editorial cartoonist Herblock (1909-2001)."

Herblock exhibit - National Portrait Gallery press release

"Herblock's Presidents: 'Puncturing Pomposity'" Opens at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery May 2

As the nation moves toward electing its 44th president, the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery is opening an exhibition of the political cartoons of Herbert Lawrence Block (1909-2001), known by the pen name "Herblock." In "Herblock's Presidents: 'Puncturing Pomposity,'" 40 political cartoons demonstrate the witty, biting humor of the cartoonist who appeared in American newspapers for more than seven decades.

(Media-Newswire.com) - As the nation moves toward electing its 44th president, the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery is opening an exhibition of the political cartoons of Herbert Lawrence Block ( 1909–2001 ), known by the pen name "Herblock." In "Herblock's Presidents: 'Puncturing Pomposity,'" 40 political cartoons demonstrate the witty, biting humor of the cartoonist who appeared in American newspapers for more than seven decades. The cartoons featured in the exhibition were selected from the collections of the Library of Congress. The exhibition demonstrates that none of the 11 presidents who held office during his career escaped his criticism. "Herblock's Presidents: Puncturing Pomposity" will be on view through Nov. 30.

"There are many talented political cartoonists today, some of whom are included in the National Portrait Gallery's collection," said Carolyn K. Carr, acting director of the National Portrait Gallery. "However, Herblock remains unmatched in his ability to craft a subtle visual metaphor."

Herblock's cartoons were never ambivalent or balanced but always expressive of a distinct political point of view; they were always clear in meaning and direct in expression. Herblock's first political cartoon appeared in the Chicago Daily News in1929. He was an editorial cartoonist with the Newspaper Enterprise Association from 1933 to 1943 and, after serving in the army, joined The Washington Post in 1946. Maintaining editorial independence for most of his newspaper career, Herblock won three Pulitzer Prizes in 1942, 1954 and 1979 and shared one more with the Washington Post in 1973 for its coverage of Watergate. Also, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994. Besides the cartoons, Herblock's awards—including his first Pulitzer Prize—and his drawing tools also will be exhibited.

The exhibition includes his depictions of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. While Herblock was generally unsympathetic to Republican presidents, Democrats such as Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton did not escape his wrath. He consistently attacked any president he felt was insensitive to the "underdog." The show offers a rare opportunity for visitors to see how one of America's greatest political cartoonists viewed the American presidency for much of the 20th century.

An additional element of the exhibition is a computer touch screen that will allow visitors to further explore Herblock's presidents. These virtual digital images are organized along such topics as presidential scandals, domestic policy and war.

The exhibition was organized by Sidney Hart, historian at the National Portrait Gallery.

This exhibition has been made possible by a generous grant from The Herb Block Foundation.

The National Portrait Gallery
The National Portrait Gallery tells the stories of America through the individuals who have shaped its culture. Through the visual arts, performing arts and new media, the Portrait Gallery portrays poets and presidents, visionaries and villains, actors and activists who speak American history.

The National Portrait Gallery opened to the public in 1968. The museum's collection of nearly 20,000 works includes paintings, sculpture, photographs, drawings and new media. Located at Eighth and F streets N.W., Washington, D.C., it is open every day, except Dec. 25, from 11:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. Smithsonian information: ( 202 ) 633-1000; ( 202 ) 633-5285 ( TTY ). Web site: www.npg.si.edu.

Herblock award presented to John Sherffius

Last night editorial cartoonist John Sherffius was presented with the fifth annual Herblock Award. Richard Thompson and I were fortunate enough to be able to attend.

The Herblock foundation fellow introducing Sherffius quoted our link buddy Dave Astor's interview with the cartoonist. She also noted that Sherffius had resigned from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch at the end of 2003 over editorial interference, an account of which can be found in the New York Times. She noted that he had 'entered a body of work' all of which was critical of George Bush, the current.

Sherffius introduced his family and then made some excellent remarks (which should be on the Herblock award site someday) saying, "I am angry..." at the Bush administration for a litany of failures and malfeasance including "outright contempt for our Constitution..." I would have voted for him right then, but he followed up with "This is not the America I want for my children; this is not the America I know." He carried onto note journalism's problems, stating, "it is grimly ironic that [while] we have one of the most abusive administrations in power, the press is withering within."

Tim Russert spoke for almost 45 minutes after Sherffius, telling Herblock anecdotes while musing on the role of a free press and its current failures. I'll try to recall some of the anecdotes, but one concerned Russert's predecessor on Meet the Press interviewing Herblock's nemesis Joseph McCarthy. McCarthy had brought a handgun to an interview, and when Russert was telling Herblock about it, Block interrupted to ask "What kind of gun?"

...Maybe you had to be there.

Richard and I accidentally closed down the place while waiting to meet John, who was very pleasant, so we gave him a ride to his hotel and tried to convince him to do some reprint books.


Library cartoon cataloger Woody Woodis, ace blogger Richard Thompson and ComicsDC public face Mike Rhode. Photo by Thuy Dong.

Herblock prize winner John Sherffius interview

See "John Sherffius Discusses the Herblock Prize and the Cartoons That Helped Him Win it," By Dave Astor, Editor and Publisher Online February 21, 2008. The Foundation's announcement can be seen here.

There's a new Herblock exhibit opening at the National Portrait Gallery in May too.

Beeler, Herblock cartoons auctioned at Cartoons and Cocktails

See "Yeas & Nays: Cartoonists enjoy evening in the sun" by Jeff Dufour and Patrick Gavin, Washington Examiner October 5, 2007.

Nobody invited me as their date, so this is the first I've seen of this. Good work, Nate! Anybody who was there (Nate?) want to post a few details? The menu? Risque stories?

Wish You Were There #1 - Comics exhibit reviews 2000-2001

The following are reviews for DC exhibits from 2000-2001. They were originally published in the International Journal of Comic Art 3:1.

Blondie Gets Married! Comic Strip Drawings by Chic Young. Harry Katz and Sara Duke. Washington, DC: Library of Congress, June 22-September 16, 2000.

Herblock's History: Political Cartoons from the Crash to the Millennium. Harry Katz, Sara Duke, and Lucia Rather. Washington, DC: Library of Congress, October 17, 2000--February 17, 2001.

Al Hirschfeld, Beyond Broadway. David Leopold. Washington, DC: Library of Congress, November 9, 2000--March 31, 2001.

At the turn of the millennium, Harry Katz and Sara Duke continued to make the Library of Congress one of the premier spaces for the display of comic art. These three exhibits examined different aspects of comic art: comic strips, political cartoons, and caricature.

Blondie, beginning in 1930, has evolved with the comic strip. Early strips were large and had continuity, but by the 1972 strip in the show, the size had shrunk and Young made it a gag strip. The exhibit of 27 strips out of a donation of 150 had minimal labeling and was divided into typical tropes: naps, courtship, wedding, family, mailman, food, work, love, homemaking, and baths. Young used a delicate line in the 1930s, typical of some cartoonists of the era, that is a pleasure to see in the original. His 1931--1933 courtship and marriage strips were wildly popular during the Depression and Young's artwork conveys now a vivid sense of the time. In the 1938 Sunday dream strip, "We'll be back in a few hours," Young was playfully surrealistic while still drawing the pretty girls he was known for. While an exhibit devoted to original art, not commentary or history, needs few labels, an explanation of the blue penciling seen on many strips over the regular graphite pencil would be helpful; the blue was used to indicate where mechanical tones and shading needed to be added by the syndicate. "All quiet on the Bumstead's front!" from 1945 contained clear marginal instructions about the shading, and showed an interesting piece of comic history now that computers handle all such details. A good brochure was distributed at the show with articles by Duke and Young's daughter, and an electronic version of the exhibit can be seen at http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/swann/blondie/.

Herbert "Herblock" Block has cartooned through nine decades, won three Pulitzer Prizes, and coined the word "McCarthyism." This exhibit was drawn from 119 cartoons that he gave to the Library. The show was mounted in a grand space on either side of the Jefferson Building's great hall on red, white, and blue panels. It was divided into roughly chronological sections except for overarching ones like "Herblock's Presidents." Herblock's masterly use of pencil, ink and crayon can be seen throughout the show, although correction overlays become more common and his latest work resembled collages. Seeing the evolution of Herblock's style and subjects over 70 years was fascinating. Although the exhibit was excellently done and displayed the breadth of his career, Block's work can be fairly easily seen in other media. He has published many collections of his work, and this exhibit has a short catalogue produced by the Library. One clever idea made this show especially interesting. The Library solicited caricatures of "Herblock by Other Cartoonists" and displayed them at the end of each panel. Fifteen colleagues like Mike Peters, Ann Telnaes, Jules Feiffer, Signe Wilkinson, and Mike Luckovich produced pointed, but obviously respectful, drawings of Block, frequently with his bete noire Richard Nixon. Katz, Duke, and Rather deserve credit for a truly fine exhibit.
The exhibit on Hirschfeld is somewhat problematic because it was designed to be. When faced with a career even longer than Herblock's, guest curator and Hirschfeld archivist David Leopold chose to focus not on Hirschfeld's well-known pen-and-ink entertainment caricatures, but rather on his other artistic pursuits. Exhibiting 24 pieces, many donated to the Library by the artist, Leopold produced a wide-ranging survey of works in all media, especially including some early art. The result was an interesting and ambitious show, but not a complete success since Hirschfeld's best work is his caricatures. Leopold included obscure material like drawings of North Africa from 1926 -- material that was reminiscent of magazine illustration of the time. Other early work like a 1923 gouache advertisement for Woman to Woman magazine recalled Szyk's work in miniatures, and his 1931 lithograph Art and Industry owed much to Daumier. Hirschfeld's color caricatures, usually for magazine covers like "Walter Lippman" for American Mercury in the 1940s, show that he could have continued doing similar work and had a full career. Recently, printing advances have made it possible for him to use color for caricatures and one from the New York Times in 2000 is in the show. The exhibit, accompanied by a well-done brochure, was an interesting example of Hirschfeld's lesser abilities, but not a major view of his career.

Politics in Black and White: Local, State, and National Cartoons and Caricatures. Dan Voss and Ellen Vartanoff. Rockville, MD: Montgomery College VCT Department Gallery, October 10--November 10, 2000.

This small exhibit was aimed at students in the College's graphic arts department. According to Voss, the "idea was to be topical and to bring in a little bit more local connection than you would expect." With eight artists (Joe Azar, Chip Beck, Steve Brodner, Chris Curtis, Kevin "Kal" Kallaugher, Marcia Klioze-Hughes, and Lucinda Levine) and 55 pieces in the exhibit, students and other visitors saw a wide range of comic art. The only label in the exhibit was a short introductory panel with brief biographical information. Azar (a conservative political cartoonist for the Legal Times and the Washington Times), Kal, and Curtis (cartoonist for the Gazette chain of local newspapers) all produce standard "modern" political cartoons; while competent, no cartoon displayed was particularly memorable. Caricaturists were well represented. Levine's work looked like that of unrelated David Levine. Klioze-Hughes' color work caricatured historical figures like George Washington. Beck's pieces were unfortunately reminiscent of the cartoonists working in chalk in shopping malls. Brodner works for national publications like the New Yorker, Time, and Newsweek and his distinctive style was well represented. "We hope to bring [the students] the real thing," Voss stated, and the exhibit succeeded in being an engaging look at the styles and ability of a small range of working professional cartoonists.


Cartoons and Campaigns. Arlington, VA: The Newseum, October 7--November 12, 2000.

Pens and Needles: The Editorial Cartoons of Joel Pett. Arlington, VA: The Newseum, November 10, 2000--January 7, 2001.

"Yes, Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus." Arlington, VA: The Newseum, December, 2000.

Cartoons and Campaigns added political cartoons to Every Four Years, an exhibit on press coverage of the Presidential campaign. The cartoons, a mixture of originals and reproductions, totaled approximately 40 pieces of art. Included in the show were originals by Luckovich (who still uses tone shading), Breen, Conrad, Wilkinson, Horsey, Borgman, Peters, and reproductions by Marlette, Toles, Handelsman, Chip Beck, Morin, Higgins, Kal, Pett, Gorrell, Gerner, Telnaes, Bok, Benson, Herblock, and Szep. The show presented a snapshot of election cartoons, and was enjoyable in a casual sense, but did not add anything significant to the study of comic art.

Pins and Needles was a significantly better exhibit in terms of learning. Ten original cartoons with commentary by Pett were displayed, unfortunately in a hallway leading to a movie theater. Seven reproductions from the twenty cartoons that Pett submitted to win the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning were also included. Pett's commentary on his process of cartooning included exhibiting three drafts and the final cartoon. This was a minor, but interesting show.

"Yes, Virginia..." is the Newseum's annual show of Thomas Nast's Harper's Weekly engravings of Santa Claus. The exhibit included artwork from 1863, 1865, 1866, 1871, 1879, 1884, and 1885 and showed how Nast's artwork and concept of Santa progressed through a twenty-year period. According to Nast, by 1884 Santa was answering telephone requests. Since Santa Claus is so deeply embedded in American culture, an annual show devoted to the cartoonist who created him helps keep Nast's work alive.


The Art of John Cederquist: Reality of Illusion. Washington, DC: National Museum of American Art's Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, March 31--August 20, 2000.

John Cederquist stretches the definition of comic art. He creates artistic wooden furniture. Cederquist is influenced by Popeye cartoons and he has copied two-dimensional furniture from the cartoons to produce three-dimensional pieces. Although this show, organized by the Oakland Museum of California, did not include any of his Popeye works among its thirteen pieces, the influence of cartoons could still be seen. "Tubular" (1990) appeared to be a bookcase made of shipping crates but had a Hokusai-style wave rolling out of the top. "Steamer Chest III" (1995) looked as though it was a coiled pipe, supported by stacked wood, with puffs of Crumb-like smoke emerging from each end of the pipe. Cederquist's titles were puns that helped define the piece -- words and pictures working together -- leading to the beginning of the definition of a cartoon. The exhibit provoked thought on what comic art really is.

Editiorial Cartoons By Herblock are Subject of Library Exhibition

http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2006/06-132.html
June 20, 2006
Press contact: Audrey Fischer (202) 707-0022

Editiorial Cartoons By Herblock are Subject of Library Exhibition
Opening July 17

"Enduring Outrage: Editorial Cartoons by Herblock" will open on Monday, July 17, in the Southwest Gallery of the Thomas Jefferson Building, 10 First Street S.E., Washington, D.C. The exhibition, which will remain on view through Jan. 20, 2007, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday -Saturday, will feature approximately 40 original cartoon drawings by the Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist Herbert Block, better known as Herblock.The Herblock exhibition will be a featured display in the reopened "American Treasures of the Library of Congress" exhibition, which will be closed June 18 through July 16.

The Herblock exhibition's main section, "Get Out the Vote,"chronicles elections from 1946 to 1998 and comments on Democratic andRepublican presidential administrations during the same time period. Other sections of the display highlight six major themes of enduring importance to Herblock that continue to resonate in American society today: environment, ethics, extremism, the Middle East, privacy/security and war.

When he died in October 2001, Block left the bulk of his estate to create the Herb Block Foundation to carry on his life's work of championing the cause of social justice. In 2003 the foundation donated the Herbert L. Block archives of editorial cartoons to the Library of Congress, where they are available to both scholars and the general public.

In addition to 14,000 original drawings and more than 2,000 preparatory sketches, the collection includes voluminous files of records, correspondence, clippings and photographs. The donation also provides for display of portions of the collection. This exhibition will mark the debut in a Library of Congress exhibition of Herblock's rough sketches for finished drawings. An online version of the upcoming exhibition will join several previous Library exhibitions ofHerblock's work at www.loc.gov/exhibits.

Herblock was one of the most influential political commentators and editorial cartoonists in American history. His work reflects a dailynewspaper career that spanned much of the 20th century. From April 1929 to August 2001, Herblock chronicled the major social and political events of the nation and the world, summarizing issues others had taken thousands of words to explain in a single 4-by-6-inch drawing. Herblock spent the last 55 years of his career as the editorial cartoonist for The Washington Post.

# # #PR 06-13206/20/06
ISSN 0731-3527