Friday, July 18, 2014
August 14: Civil War veterans Swann Lecture at Library of Congress
Friday, July 11, 2014
2014 National Book Festival comics guests
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
Jan 14: Kal at Library of Congress
Sara Duke reports, "Kevin Kallaugher talk about his most recent publication, Daggers Drawn, in the Pickford Theater (3rd floor, Madison Building) next Tuesday - January 14, at noon. For those of you who don't already have a copy of Daggers Drawn, the Library of Congress offers them at a discounted price. The Madison Building is located at 101 Independence Avenue, SE. The nearest Metro station is Capitol South. This event is free and open to the public."
Tuesday, January 07, 2014
The Economist Cartoonist Kevin Kallaugher to Discuss His New Book, Jan. 14
Library of Congress
101 Independence Ave. SE
Washington DC 20540
January 7, 2014
Public contact: Center for the Book (202) 707-5221; cfbook@loc.gov
Request ADA accommodations five business days in advance at (202) 707-6362 or ada@loc.gov
Kallaugher will discuss and sign his new book, "Daggers Drawn: 35 Years of Kal Cartoons in The Economist" (Chatsworth Press, 2013), on Tuesday, Jan. 14, at noon in the Pickford Theater, third floor, Madison Building, 101 Independence Ave. S.E. This Books & Beyond event, co-sponsored by the Library's Center for the Book and its Prints and Photographs Division, is free and open to the public; no tickets are required.
This 196-page large-format book contains more than 300 of Kallaugher's award-winning works along with essays discussing his time with The Economist. In this book, Kallaugher has pointed his keen eye and sharp pen at important world events of the past 35 years. There are cartoons satirizing leaders from Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher to Barack Obama and Angela Merkel.
In addition to his longtime work for The Economist, Kallaugher is also a cartoonist for The Baltimore Sun. He also spent 10 years in London, drawing cartoons for The Observer, The Sunday Telegraph, Today and The Mail on Sunday. His work has been exhibited at the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore, The Tate Gallery in London and the Library of Congress.
The Library's Center for the Book, established by Congress in 1977 to "stimulate public interest in books and reading," is a national force for reading and literacy promotion. A public-private partnership, it sponsors educational programs that reach readers of all ages through its affiliated state centers, through collaborations with nonprofit reading-promotion partners and through the Young Readers Center and the Poetry and Literature Center at the Library of Congress. For more information, visit www.read.gov.
The Library of Congress, the nation's oldest federal cultural institution and the largest library in the world, holds more than 158 million items in various languages, disciplines and formats. The Library serves the U.S. Congress and the nation both on-site in its reading rooms on Capitol Hill and through its award-winning website at www.loc.gov.
1/7/14
ISSN 0731-3527
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
Wow, the GPO has an interesting choice for a Christmas illustration
Oh, say, can you tree? American Christmas tree traditions
by Michele Bartram, U.S. Government Online Bookstorehttp://govbooktalk.gpo.gov/2013/12/17/oh-say-can-you-tree-american-christmas-tree-traditions/
Friday, September 13, 2013
Sept 13 at noon: Heidi MacDonald at Library of Congress
Should you be in the DC area for the 2013 Small Press Expo, consider
visiting the Library of Congress a day earlier for a talk on Friday,
September 13:
Heidi MacDonald, creator of The Beat, a daily news blog about comics,
and former editor at DC Comics, will discuss "After Watchmen and Maus:
Exploring the Graphic Novel" at the second annual SPX talk sponsored
by the Serial & Government Publications Division.
We will also display some of our recently acquired SPX mini-comics
and selected works by Heidi MacDonald.
Please join us on Friday, September 13, at noon in the West Dining
Room, located on the 6th floor of the Madison Building, Library of
Congress, 101 Independence Ave, SE, Washington, DC.
The program is free and open to the public.
Wednesday, September 04, 2013
Lecture by Heidi MacDonald on Friday, September 13 at the Library of Congress
Should you be in the DC area for the 2013 Small Press Expo, consider
visiting the Library of Congress a day earlier for a talk on Friday,
September 13:
Heidi MacDonald, creator of The Beat, a daily news blog about comics,
and former editor at DC Comics, will discuss "After Watchmen and Maus:
Exploring the Graphic Novel" at the second annual SPX talk sponsored
by the Serial & Government Publications Division.
We will also display some of our recently acquired SPX mini-comics
and selected works by Heidi MacDonald.
Please join us on Friday, September 13, at noon in the West Dining
Room, located on the 6th floor of the Madison Building, Library of
Congress, 101 Independence Ave, SE, Washington, DC.
The program is free and open to the public.
Thursday, June 27, 2013
Gibson Girls exhibit review in today's Express
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
March 26: Comic Book Panel Discussion at Library of Congress
Thursday, March 07, 2013
Steven Heller on Thomas Nast's murals, and the Library of Congress connection
A Caricamural View of the American Civil War.
Steven Heller
The Daily Heller blog (March 7)
http://imprint.printmag.com/daily-heller/a-caricamural-view-of-the-american-civil-war/
In the article, Heller notes, "In 1950 five of the large (8' x 12') paintings were found in a barn in Morristown, New Jersey, where Nast had lived. They were acquired by Erwin Swann, founder of the Swann Foundation of Caricature and Cartoon dedicated to scholarship on comics and cartoons in all media."
DC-area cartoon types should recognize the name Swann - his collection is in the Library of Congress. Swann curator Martha Kennedy confirmed for me that the paintings are in the Library, albeit in off-site storage because they're so large. This search should pull up the catalogue records and hi-res scans of the five 8 x 11 1/2 feet images. Martha also says that 2 more of the paintings survive in the northeast.
More on Wertham's collection at the Library of Congress
Carol L Tilley
Boing Boing Mar 4 2013
http://boingboing.net/2013/03/04/comic-books-real-life-superv.html
Friday, March 01, 2013
More cartoons on view at Library of Congress
In the Words Like Sapphires: 100 Years of Hebraica at the Library of Congress, 1912–2012 exhibit, there's two original paintings by Arthur Szyk for playing cards.
Down to Earth: Herblock and Photographers Observe the Environment is only open for three more weeks.
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
"The Gibson Girl's America: Drawings by Charles Dana Gibson" Exhibition Opens March 30
101 Independence Ave. SE
Washington DC 20540
February 26, 2013
Public contact: Martha Kennedy (202) 707-9115, mkenn@loc.gov
"The Gibson Girl's America: Drawings by Charles Dana Gibson"
Exhibition Opens at Library of Congress on March 30
In the 1890s, illustrator Charles Dana Gibson created the "Gibson Girl," a vibrant, new feminine ideal—a young woman who pursued higher education, romance, marriage, physical well-being and individuality with unprecedented independence. Until World War I, the Gibson Girl set the standard for beauty, fashion and manners.
The Library of Congress announces a new exhibition, "The Gibson Girl's America: Drawings by Charles Dana Gibson," which opens Saturday, March 30 in the Graphic Arts Galleries on the ground level of the Library's Thomas Jefferson Building, 10 First St. S.E., Washington, D.C., and runs through Saturday, Aug. 17, 2013. The exhibition is free and open to the public from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Saturday.
"The Gibson Girl's America" presents 24 works, primarily drawings. The exhibition highlights the rise of the Gibson Girl from the 1890s through the first two decades of the 20th century. It also illuminates how women's increasing presence in the public sphere contributed to the social fabric of turn-of-the-20th-century America.
The items on display trace the arc of the artist's career. Gibson (1867-1944) came of age when women's roles were expanding and social mobility was increasing. He trained at the Art Students League in New York City and also in Europe. The artist created satirical illustrations based on his observations of upper-middle-class life for such mainstream magazines as Life, Collier's Weekly, Harper's Weekly, Scribner's and Century.
Through creation and development of the Gibson Girl, the artist, an acclaimed master of pen-and-ink drawings, experienced unrivaled professional and popular success. Gibson's skills and prolific output meshed with the high-volume demand at the time for magazine illustrations. His bold style and virtuoso technique exerted enormous influence on his peers and succeeding generations of illustrators.
The exhibition will be organized into five sections: Creating an Ideal, The Gibson Girl as the "New Woman," Social Relations Between the Sexes, High Society Scenes and Political Cartoonist. The exhibition presents a selection of Gibson's lesser-known political images, spotlighting the concerns he addressed in his later work.
The items in the exhibition are drawn from Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, which holds the premier public collection of original drawings by Gibson.
The Prints and Photographs Division also includes approximately 14.4 million photographs, drawings and prints from the 15th century to the present day. International in scope, these visual collections represent a uniquely rich array of human experience, knowledge, creativity and achievement, touching on almost every realm of endeavor: science, art, invention, government and political struggle, and the recording of history. For more information, visit www.loc.gov/rr/print/.
The Library of Congress, the nation's oldest federal cultural institution and the largest library in the world, holds more than 155 million items in various languages, disciplines and formats. The Library serves the U.S. Congress and the nation both on-site in its reading rooms on Capitol Hill and through its award-winning website at www.loc.gov.
2/26/13
ISSN: 0731-3527
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Wertham papers in Library of Congress add fuel to 60-year old battle
and
How one man’s lies almost destroyed the comics industry
Annalee Newitz
Io9 February 19 2013
http://io9.com/5985199/how-one-mans-lies-almost-destroyed-the-comics-industry
Friday, February 15, 2013
Cartoons to see in the L.o.C.
There's a small brochure for the exhibit, although you have to get it at the Madison Building's Prints & Photographs department.
At the same location is "Herblock Looks at 1962: Fifty Years Ago in Editorial Cartoons," an exhibit curated by Sara Duke. This smaller exhibit focuses on President Kennedy.
Obviously Sara made curatorial choices to influence this in both exhibits, but it's still depressing how relevant 50-year-old cartoons are:
The third exhibit is a small one on comic books featuring Presidents that Megan Halsband did in the Serials Department (in the Madison Building) for President's Day. The majority of these comics are from Bluewater's current biographical series, but she did find an issue of Action Comics that I don't remember seeing.
The Prints & Photographs division showed off its new acquisitions this week. Sara Duke showed some original comic book and strip artwork:
A piece by Keith Knight, and two pages from Jim Rugg's anthology. They collected the entire book except for the centerfold. Not shown is...
Above are voting rights prints by Lalo Alcaraz, possibly selected by Helena Zinkham.
Martha Kennedy had some great acquistions this year, including works by James Flora, editorial cartoonist Signe Wilkinson, Garry "Doonesbury" Trudeau, and Charles Vess' entire book of Ballads and Sagas:
This artwork isn't on exhibit, but you can make an appointment to view it.
Wednesday, February 06, 2013
Our buddy Bernard examines Wertham's cold remains
Warren Bernard's Citations and Fredric Wertham Documents
BY Warren Bernard Feb 6, 2013
http://www.tcj.com/warren-bernard-1954/
Thursday, December 06, 2012
Oddity from the Library of Congress
It's part of the 14,000-piece Ruthven Deane Bookplate Collection. It's out of copyright so you can download a hi-res version.
Years ago I wrote a brief piece for Hogan's Alley about Clifford Berryman's bookplates. It doesn't appear to be online anymore, so I'll recreate it here in the next day or so.
Monday, May 14, 2012
Herblock lectures online
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
March 29: How Early American Comic Strips Shed Light on the Nature of the Child
Library of Congress
101 Independence Ave. SE
Washington DC 20540
March 6, 2012
Public contact: Martha Kennedy (202) 707-9115, mkenn@loc.gov
Swann Foundation Fellow Lara Saguisag to Discuss
How Early American Comic Strips Shed Light on the Nature of the Child
Swann Foundation Fellow Lara Saguisag, in a lecture at the Library of Congress, will examine how early 20th-century comic strips that featured child protagonists revealed the nature of the child during that era.
Saguisag will present "Sketching the 'Secret Tracts' of the Child's Mind: Theorizing Childhood in Early American Fantasy Strips, 1905-1914," at noon on Thursday, March 29, in Dining Room A on the sixth floor of the James Madison Building, 101 Independence Avenue S.E., Washington, D.C. The lecture is free and open to the public. No tickets are needed.
Saguisag will focus specifically on fantasy strips such as Winsor McCay's "Little Nemo in Slumberland" and Lyonel Feininger's "Wee Willie Winkie's World." These strips featured child characters who inhabited dream worlds and transformed their environments through their imaginations. According to Saguisag, central to these works is the idea that a child's perception and experience of the world was shaped by his/her proclivity for fantasy. This natural connection with fantasy, moreover, made the child a complex, sometimes inscrutable figure, one who was essentially different from an adult.
Comic strips that linked childhood and fantasy drew from and built on themes of late-19th and early-20th-century children's books such as Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," Robert Louis Stevenson's "A Child's Garden of Verses" and Frank L. Baum's "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz." Such literature portrayed and celebrated the child as a highly imaginative being who enters and sometimes creates fantasy worlds that an adult could not readily access.
According to Saguisag, during the same period, psychologists and practitioners associated with the Child Study Movement were also intrigued by what G. Stanley Hall termed the "secret tracts" of the child's mind. Many psychologists concluded that imaginative play and reverie were healthful childhood activities and advised parents to take an active role in cultivating the child's imagination. The intersection of children's literature and psychology encountered in early American "kid strips" helped perpetuate and naturalize the image of the imaginative child.
Born and raised in the Philippines, Saguisag completed an M.A. in Children's literature at Hollins University and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing at The New School. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Childhood Studies at Rutgers University-Camden, where she held a University Presidential Fellowship from 2007-2009.
This presentation is sponsored by the Caroline and Erwin Swann Foundation for Caricature and Cartoon of the Library of Congress and the Library's Prints & Photographs Division. The lecture is part of the foundation's continuing activities to support the study, interpretation, preservation and appreciation of original works of humorous and satiric art by graphic artists from around the world. The foundation strives to award one fellowship annually to assist scholarly research and writing projects in the field of caricature and cartoon. Applications for the 2013-2014 academic year are due Feb. 15, 2013. More information about the fellowship is available through the Swann Foundation's website: www.loc.gov/rr/print/swann/ or by e-mailing swann@loc.gov.
# # #
PR12-48
3/6/12
ISSN: 0731-3527