Daniel Clowes exhibit fell through at the Corcoran in 2014

"I Feel Like Comics Needs Its Own Thing": An Interview with Daniel Clowes

BY Bill Kartalopoulos Jan 14, 2020

http://www.tcj.com/i-feel-like-comics-needs-its-own-thing-an-interview-with-daniel-clowes/

The Corcoran itself fell apart in 2014, so it's no surprise they couldn't mount the exhibit. For the record though, here's Mr. Clowes take on it, courtesy of Bill K's question. The whole interview is worth reading though. I got to interview him once, and he's a good, thoughtful person to speak with.

BILL KARTALOPOULOS: You currently have a large, retrospective exhibit touring the U.S. called Modern Cartoonist. This has been in Oakland and Chicago, and now it's in Columbus, right?

DANIEL CLOWES: Yeah, and I think that's it.

It's not coming anywhere to the East Coast?

Originally, our idea was to travel across the country, and it was going to go to the Corcoran in D.C. I'm not so up on all the intrigue in the museum world, but I guess they had some huge funding deficit, and they had to fire their board and hire some new president and all that, and in that whole shuffle they cancelled all outside shows. And I heard all this stuff about the board, and they were not so excited about the idea of putting comics in there anyway. And so, when they later came back and wanted to try to talk to us again about getting it back there, I just had lost interest after hearing all that. When the exhibit started, it seemed like this abstract thing, and I didn't have any sense of how it would feel. But now I want all of this stuff back. [Laughs] I keep seeing it hundreds of miles away from my house, and I'm like, "I want my artwork back in my room." I don't know. It feels weird. It's like having children away at camp for two years or something.