This exhibition explores the unforgettable art and satire of MAD, from its beginnings in 1952 as a popular humor comic book to its emergence as a beloved magazine that spoke truth to power and attracted generations of devoted readers through the decades. MAD’s influence and cultural impact will be explored in this landmark installation, which features iconic original illustrations and cartoons created by the magazine’s Usual Gang of Idiots—the many artists and writers who have been the publication’s mainstays for decades. These include Sergio Aragonés, David Berg, Paul Coker, Jack Davis, Dick DeBartolo, Mort Drucker, Will Elder, John Ficarra, Kelly Freas, Al Jaffee, Harvey Kurtzman, Don Martin, Nick Meglin, Norman Mingo, Antonio Prohías, Marie Severin, John Severin, Angelo Torres, Sam Viviano, Richard Williams, and Wally Wood. The art of next generation visual humorists, including Emily Flake, Drew Friedman, Peter Kuper, Teresa Burns Parkhurst, C.F. Payne, Tom Richmond, and Dale Stephanos, will also be on view.

Visit the Exhibition Webpage >

Zoom Webinar (online)
Welcome and Opening Program:
Friday, September 23, 2022
7 p.m. to 8:45 p.m.

Symposium Presentations and Panels:
Saturday, September 24, 2022
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Compelling conversations with illustrators, art directors, authors, and scholars will explore more than three hundred years of racial representation in published art and the role of mass-circulated imagery as a force in shaping public perception about people and groups of people. Presented in conjunction with Imprinted: Illustrating Race, the Museum’s current exhibition, this symposium will spark dialogue about the ways that art, advertising, and systems of publishing have helped to frame public opinion, and how the art of illustration is a force for change today.

Featured speakers include: Robyn Phillips-Pendleton, Professor, University of Delaware and Co-Curator of Imprinted: Illustrating Race; Michele Bogart, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus of Art History and visual culture studies at Stony BrookUniversity Heather Campbell Coyle, Ph.D., Chief Curator and Curator of American Art, Delaware Art Museum; Leonard Davis, designer and collector of Black Americana; Karen Fang, Ph.D., Professor in the Department of English at the University of Houston; Colette Gaiter, Professor in the Departments of Africana Studies and Art & Design at the University of Delaware and author of Emory Douglas and the Black Panther Artists of 1968; Black Panther Artists Emory Douglas, Gayle “Assali” Dickson, and Malik Edwards; Hollis King, artist and former vice-president andcreative director at the Verve Music Group; Theresa Leininger-Miller, Ph.D., Professor of Art History, University of Cincinnati; Cherene Sherrard-Johnson, Professor and Chair of English, Pomona College; Gallerist Leslie Ferrin and ceramicists Elizabeth Alexander, Jacqueline Bishop, Niki Johnson, and Paul Scott; Judy Chartrand, a Manitoba Cree artist; culture journalist and writer Karama Horne and Eisner Award-nominated artist and writer Shawn Martinbrough; and artists Rudy Gutierrez and Gregory Christie.

Join us for all or part of Illustration and Race: Rethinking the History of Published Images

This symposium is generously funded with support from the Terra Foundation for American Art.

“Jerry was beloved in the world and by all of us at Norman Rockwell Museum. Distinguished NRM Artist Laureate, Jerry created indelible images that will continue to delight and educate us all to America’s history and mythology. We are bereft by his loss and take comfort in having so many wonderful memories of working meaningfully together for many years. We send our deepest condolences to his wife, Gloria, and his children, longtime friends of Norman Rockwell Museum,” shared Laurie Norton Moffatt, director/CEO.

“It has been the honor of a lifetime to work with Jerry Pinkney on so many significant initiatives, and I have been grateful for his warm and supportive friendship through the years. His generosity, intelligence, and buoyant spirit will forever be remembered,” said Stephanie Haboush Plunkett, Deputy Director and Chief Curator.

Most recently, Jerry worked with us as an esteemed and knowledgeable advisor to Imprinted: Perceptions of Race in lllustration, an exhibition that will be on view at the Museum next summer. Jerry will be greatly missed, but his generous spirit, extraordinary artworks, and the powerful messages contained within them leave an indelible legacy. Our sincere condolences to Gloria Jean Pinkney, Jerry’s wife of more than six decades, and the entire Pinkney family, for the very sad loss of their beloved husband, father, grandfather, and great grandfather.

Read the complete statement >

Zoom Webinar (online)
Friday and Saturday, October 22 and 23, 2021

Price: $20 covers both days of programs of the symposium

RSVP TODAY

Keynote:
Alice A. Carter, Art Historian and Author
On the Side of the Angels: Fantasy in an Age of Discovery

In the Age of Discovery, scientists were uncovering mysterious forces, objects, and elements at work in the universe. Alice A. Carter will discuss the discoveries that inspired artist/poet William Blake and many of his successors to create images combining natural phenomena with supernatural elements. Today, we classify these works as fantasy art, but in their day, the pictures were the honest manifestation of a widespread conviction that the visible world was only part of the story.

Alice A. Carter is cofounder and Professor Emeritus of San Jose State University’s award-winning Animation/Illustration program. A member of the Norman Rockwell Museum’s Board of Trustees, and former President, she has served as Co-Director of Education at the Walt Disney Family Museum and as visiting faculty for the University of Hartford’s low-residency MFA in Illustration. Carter’s illustration clients have included LucasFilm Ltd., Rolling Stone magazine, the New York Times, and ABC Television. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the country, including the Norman Rockwell Museum, the Art Institute of Houston, and the New Britain Museum. Carter’s publications include The Red Rose Girls: An Uncommon Story of Art and Love; The Essential Thomas Eakins; Cecilia Beaux: A Modern Painter in the Gilded Age, and The Drawings of Edwin Austin Abbey. Carter is a member of the Hall of Fame Committee at the New York Society of Illustrators and is on the advisory board of Spectrum Fantastic Art.

Opening Remarks: 
Stephanie Haboush Plunkett, Deputy Director/Chief Curator
Real and Imagined: Fantastical Rockwell

An ardent and perceptive observer, Norman Rockwell was a persuasive visual commentator whose realist paintings for popular periodicals inspired belief by millions in the innate goodness of humanity and the achievability of the American dream. Rockwell also inspired our love of fantasy in ways that he may not have fully perceived; his carefully constructed artworks for The Saturday Evening Post and other magazines, and for hundreds of twentieth century advertisers and products, are the work of a consummate mythmaker who understood his audience’s deepest desires and spoke to them from the heart. Art critic Peter Schjeldahl once noted that Rockwell’s “precisely observed facts squared with deeply serious hopes”[i] constituted “as accurate a graph as we have of what being American—a fictive condition, always,” could feel like.

Stephanie Haboush Plunkett is Deputy Director/Chief Curator of the Norman Rockwell Museum. She currently leads the Rockwell Center for American Visual Studies and has organized many illustration-based exhibitions. Her most recent publication is Drawing Lessons from the Famous Artists School: Classic Techniques and Expert Tips from the Golden Age of Illustration.

Artist Panel One:
The Fairy Tale in Fantasy Art
With:

• Ruth Sanderson
• Jane Yolen

Many of today’s popular fairy tales first appeared in collections published by Charles Perrault, the Brothers Grimm, and Hans Christian Andersen. The stories, however, evolved from folklore passed down for many generations. Master artist Ruth Sanderson and Jane Yolen will discuss the portrayals of fairy tales in their art, and the antagonists who manifest themselves as tricksters, evil stepmothers, and other beings with fantastical abilities and powers.

Artist Bios:

Best-known for her illustrations of classic fairy tales such as The Twelve Dancing Princesses, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and Goldilocks, award-winning artist and author Ruth Sanderson’s paintings have been published in more than eighty books. Her beautifully rendered artworks can also be found in books such as The Enchanted Wood; The Golden Mare, The Firebird, and The Magic Ring; and The Snow Princess. She is Co-Director of the low-residency MFA in Children’s Book Writing and Illustrating and Certificate in Children’s Book Illustration programs at Hollins University.

Jane Yolen’s books and stories and poems have won the Caldecott Medal, two Nebula Awards, two Christopher Medals, three World Fantasy Awards, three Mythopoeic Fantasy Awards, two Golden Kite Awards, the Jewish Book Award and the Massachusetts Center for the Book award. She has also won the World Fantasy Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award, the Science Fiction Writers of America’s Grand Master Award, and the Science Fiction Poetry Associations Grand Master Award (the three together she calls the Trifecta). Plus she has won both the Association of Jewish Libraries Award and the Catholic Libraries Medal. Also the DuGrummond Medal and the Kerlan Award, and the Ann Izard story-telling award at least three times. Six colleges and universities have given her honorary doctorates for her body of work, so–she jokingly says–you could call her Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Yolen though she can’t set a leg. However, she does warn about winning too many awards as one of them set her good coat on fire. If you meet her, you can ask about that!

Artist Panel Two:
The Making of Myths
With:

• Victo Ngai
• Justin Gerard
• Ian McCaig

Greco-Roman sculptures of mythological figures carved thousands of years ago express the power of the gods and of the myths themselves. These ancient tales have been favorite subjects of poets, storytellers, sculptors, painters, and illustrators throughout history and into modern times. Our panelists will discuss their interest in mythology and approaches to portraying capricious gods and other figures who entice humans to perform impossible tasks.

Artist Bios:

Born in Hong Kong, Victo Ngai studied at the Rhode Island School of Design. In her career, she has won numerous awards and accolades from her peers for her bold color palette and inventive designs. In 2018, Ngai won the Spectrum Gold Award for book illustration, and was awarded the advertising gold medal from the Society of Illustrators the following year. Ngai has illustrated advertising campaigns for McDonald’s, Apple, Johnnie Walker, American Express, and numerous other companies.

Justin Gerard’s fantasy paintings exhibit a bold color palette, inventive composition, and terrific wit. Reminiscent of the fantastic artworks created by Arthur Rackham, Palmer Cox, and Maxfield Parrish, Gerard’s monsters, demons, and trolls never seem all that evil. The creatures in Gerard’s world exhibit a light-hearted spirit within a thoughtful world of beauty and wonder built around them. His clients have included The Jim Henson Company, Warner Bros., HarperCollins, and Random House, and his work has been featured in Spectrum: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art, and the Society of Illustrators Annual of American Illustration.

Over the past thirty years, Iain McCaig has designed concept art, storyboard art, and designs for several blockbuster movies. He began his career in cinema creating artwork for Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), Hook (1991), and Interview with the Vampire (1994). In 1999, McCaig was hired as a principal designer for the three Star Wars prequel films, as well as the more recent Star Wars movies. McCaig has also created concept art and design for The Spiderwick Chronicles (2008), John Carter (2012), The Avengers (2012), Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), Avengers: Infinity War (2018), among others.

Symposium Information

Recorded: January 15 - 16, 2021 

Description

For designers, cartoonists, and illustrators, many questions arise when creating art that takes up socially significant, sometimes controversial themes. Some choose the D.I.Y. route, working independently with a free hand, without access to the large scale distribution that comes with a recognizable masthead. Others work with leading news organizations and magazines, agreeing to collaborate in exchange for access to audiences. Popular art has always involved such choices. What are the tradeoffs? What are the rewards? 

This timely symposium will explore historical and contemporary notions of freedom as well as the role of illustration as a force in shaping public perception. How has published imagery affected decision-making, public policy, and cultural understanding? Prominent authors, illustrators, and scholars will offer perspectives. Share your observations by participating in all or some of these compelling conversations.

This program is supported in part by the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation.

Media Sponsor:

Symposium Schedule

Friday, January 15: 7pm - 7:30pm | Welcome & Opening Commentary

• Welcome –  7pm
  Stephanie Haboush Plunkett, Deputy Director/Chief Curator, Norman Rockwell Museum
   
• Opening Commentary: Thoughts on Freedom from Fear 
  Erika Doss, Ph.D., Professor of American Studies, Notre Dame University; Rockwell Center Distinguished Fellow

Friday, January 15: 7:30pm - 8:30pm | Keynote Address

• Keynote Address – 7:30 pm – Freedom V. Fear: A History of Anti-Fascist Art
   
• Steven Heller, Author, Illustration/Graphic Design Historian, Educator
  
  Bloodless wars for hearts and minds takes place on a battlefield of perception. The weaponry is paper. The ammunition are posters, magazines and printed graphic design. This talk will address the power of propaganda, the concerted effort to manipulate the conscious and subconscious through words and pictures – typography and illustration.
  
  Steven Heller has written extensively on design/illustration and Fascism, notably The Swastika and Symbols of Hate: Extremist Iconography Today, a nuanced and comprehensive examination of the most powerful symbol ever created.

Saturday, January 16: 10am - 10:30am | Welcome & Opening Commentary

• Freedoms of Speech & Artistic Expression - 10am
   
• Welcome –  10am
  D.B. Dowd, Professor and Faculty Director, D.B. Dowd Modern Graphic History Library, Washington University in St. Louis
   
• Opening Commentary: Freedom of Speech and the Press
  Kevin Moran, Editor of The Berkshire Eagle

Saturday, January 16: 10:30am - 11:30am | Panel 1

• DIY Print Culture and Citizenship – 10:30am
   
• Chair: Ryan Standfest, Editor and Publisher of Rotland Press
   
• Panelists: Illustrators Sue Coe; Christopher Sperandio, Robert Sikoryak

Reflecting upon Norman Rockwell’s representation of “the ideal” of freedom in his interpretation of Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms, this panel will delve into a nuanced and contemporary grappling with the “less than ideal”—when visual satire is often summoned and the depiction of villainy is necessitated. Within DIY print culture, the artist/citizen introduces such visual political work into the greater culture with a minimum of means, without relying upon a mainstream system of distribution: cheaply produced pamphlets, affordable prints, and the use of social media platforms. For such artists, the question of audience engagement is crucial: how to responsibly affect a culture of political ideas from a place of independent agency.

Saturday, January 16: 11:30 - 11:45 | Break

Saturday, January 16: 11:45am - 12:45pm | Panel 2

• Resistance and Mainstream Publishing: Media, Delivery, and Propaganda – 11:45am
   
• Chairs: D.B. Dowd and Stephanie Haboush Plunkett
   
• Panelists: Illustrators Nora Krug, Anita Kunz, and Rudy Gutierrez

Our publishing ecosystem is in need of attention, as local journalism falters, media consolidation intensifies, and social media contribute to the spread of disinformation, collectively undermining the factual bases upon which argument depends. The veracity of online outlets can be hard to establish; the cultural filtration systems we rely on to evaluate sources will develop, but they will take time. For now, existing publications and institutions must step in to underscore and support our shared democratic values. Freedom of expression for artists working within mainstream publishing will be explored.  

Saturday, January 16: 12:45pm - 1:15pm | Wrap Up: Audience and Panelist Discussion

Participant Biographies

Sue Coe is an English artist and illustrator working primarily in drawing, printmaking, and in the form of illustrated books and comics. Her work is in the tradition of social protest art and often includes animal rights commentary, though she also creates work that centralizes the rights of marginalized peoples and criticizes capitalism. Her commentary on political events and social injustice are published in newspapers, magazines and books. As an illustrator, she is a frequent contributor to World War 3 Illustrated, and has seen her work published in The Progressive, Mother Jones, Blab, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Time Magazine, Newsweek, and The Nation. Her books explore apartheid and the murder of Steve Biko in How to Commit Suicide in South Africa; Sheep of Fools, a horrific look at the conditions of sheep trade; and Dead Meat, a journalistic piece illustrating the brutality of slaughterhouses throughout North America, among other subjects.

Erika Doss is an art historian and professor in the Department of American Studies at the University of Notre Dame. Her wide-ranging interests in American art are reflected in the breadth of her publications and public lectures, which typically engage the complexities of modern and contemporary American visual and material cultures including the nature of representation and issues of history, memory, and identity—national, cultural, and self.

Her books include Benton, Pollock, and the Politics of Modernism: From Regionalism to Abstract Expressionism, Spirit Poles and Flying Pigs: Public Art and Cultural Democracy in American Communities, Elvis Culture: Fans, Faith, and Image, American Art of the 20th and 21st Centuries, Memorial Mania: Public Feeling in America, and others. Doss is also co-editor of the “Culture America” series at the University Press of Kansas, and has served on the editorial boards of American Quarterly, American Art, Memory Studies, Public Art Dialogue, and The Space Between: Literature and Culture, 1914-1945. A recipient of several Fulbright Awards, Doss has also held fellowships at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Wolfsonian, the Stanford Humanities Center, and the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Research Center.  In 2017, she was named to the first Rockwell Center for American Visual Studies Society of Fellows at the Norman Rockwell Museum.

D. B. Dowd is an illustrator, designer, and Professor of Art and American Culture Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. He is faculty director of the D.B. Dowd Modern Graphic History Library, in the Division of Special Collections in Washington University Libraries, and has led the Society of Fellows at the Rockwell Center for American Visual Studies, a program of the Norman Rockwell Museum. The author and illustrator of Spartan Holidays, an award-winning visual journal, Dowd has written and spoken extensively on published imagery and comics. His book Stick Figures: Drawing as a Human Practice was published by the Rockwell Center in 2018; A is for Autocrat is his most recent publication.

Rudy Gutierrez is an American illustrator and educator born in the Bronx, NY, of Puerto Rican heritage, and raised in Teaneck, NJ. He has been a professor of illustration at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, where he has taught since 1990. The artist’s work has appeared in films and performances, and on U.S. Postage stamps (Musical Icon Series of Jimi Hendrix), posters, and LP / CD covers. His artwork for Santana’s “Shaman” was used as a set design at the 2002 Super Bowl half-time show and for various products. More recently, his paintings have been commissioned for the film “Chasing Trane: The John Coltrane Documentary.” Featured in many public and private collections, his art is included in those of musical icons Carlos Santana, Clive Davis, and Wayne Shorter. Gutierrez’s many awards include the Society of Illustrators’ Dean Cornwell Recognition Hall of Fame Award, Distinguished Educator in the Arts Award, and Gold Medal. His children’s books have earned a Pura Belpre Award, Americas Book Award, Children’s Africana Book Awards, and a New York Book Award. Communication Arts, Step by Step Graphics, Art News, American Illustration, American Artist and Art Direction Magazine have featured his art.

Steven Heller was for thirty-three years an art director at the New York Times, originally on the OpEd Page and with the New York Times Book Review. Currently, he is co-chair of the MFA Designer as Author Department, Special Consultant to the President of SVA for New Programs, and writes the Visuals column for the New York Times Book Review. Heller is the co-founder and co-chair (with Lita Talarico) of the MFA Designer as Author program at the School of Visual Arts, where he lectures on the history of graphic design. Prior to this, he lectured on the history of illustration in the school’s MFA Illustration as Visual Essay program, and was director for ten years of SVA’s Modernism & Eclecticism: A History of American Graphic Design symposiums. For over two decades he has been contributing editor to Print, Eye, Baseline, and ID magazines, contributing hundreds of articles to these and other design and culture journals. The author, co-author, and/or editor of many books on design and popular culture, Heller has worked with a score of publishers, including Chronicle Books, Allworth Press, Harry N. Abrams, Phaidon Press, Taschen Press, Abbeville Press, Thames & Hudson, Rockport, Northlight, and more. Recent books include Iron Fists: Branding the Totalitarian State, an anaylsis of how the major dictatorships used graphics to propagate their ideologies, and The Swastika and Symbols of Hate: Extremist Iconography Today, a comprehensive examination of the most powerful symbol ever created.

Nora Krug is a German-American author and illustrator whose drawings and visual narratives have appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde diplomatique, and A Public Space, and in anthologies published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Simon and Schuster and Chronicle Books. Krug has received fellowships from Fulbright, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the Maurice Sendak Foundation, and her books are included in the Library of Congress and the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia University. Krug was named Moira Gemmill Illustrator of the Year and 2019 Book Illustration Prize Winner by the Victoria and Albert Museum. Her visual memoir Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home was chosen as a best book of the year by the New York Times, The Guardian, NPR, Kirkus Review, The San Francisco Chronicle, and the Boston Globe. It was the winner of the 2019 National Book Critics Circle Award (Autobiography Category), of the Lynd Ward Graphic Novel Prize, the Art Directors Club gold cube and discipline winner cube, and the British Book Design and Production Award. Her visual biography, Kamikaze, about a surviving Japanese WWII pilot, was included in Houghton Mifflin’s Best American Comics and Best Non-Required Reading, and her animations have been shown at the Sundance Film Festival. Krug is Associate Professor of Illustration at the Parsons School of Design in New York City.

Anita Kunz has been appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada, Canada’s highest civilian honor. She has lived in London, New York, and Toronto, contributing to magazines and working for design firms, book publishers, and advertising agencies in Germany, Japan, Sweden, Norway, Canada, South Africa, Holland, Portugal, France and England. Her work has been published regularly in Time magazine, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, GQ, and The New York Times, among others, and she illustrated more than fifty book jacket covers. Kunz frequently teaches workshops and lectures at universities and institutions internationally including the Smithsonian and the Corcoran in Washington DC, The Art Center and Otis in Los Angeles, The School of Visual Arts and Parsons in New York, and in Istanbul and Oslo. Her art is featured in the permanent collection of the Norman Rockwell Museum, among others.

Kevin Moran is the executive editor of The Berkshire Eagle, which since its return to local ownership in 2016, has captured several Newspaper of the Year titles and General Excellence awards from the New England Newspaper and Press Association. A native of the Berkshires, Moran also has served as managing editor of The Berkshire Eagle, the Brattleboro Reformer and North Adams Transcript. A past president of the New England Associated Press News Executives Association, he also has been a mentor for foreign journalists with Alfred Friendly Press Partners.

Stephanie Haboush Plunkett is the Deputy Director and Chief Curator of the Norman Rockwell Museum. The curator of many exhibitions relating to the art of illustration, including Enduring Ideals: Rockwell, Roosevelt & the Four Freedoms; Inventing America: Rockwell and Warhol; Rockwell and Realism in an Abstract World; Roz Chast: Cartoon Memoirs; and The Unknown Hopper: Edward Hopper as Illustrator, she leads the Rockwell Center for American Visual Studies, the first scholarly institute devoted to the study of illustration art. She has taught graduate students at the Maryland Institute College of art and worked previously at Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn Children’s Museum, and the Heckscher Museum of Art. “The Shifting Postwar Marketplace: Illustration in the United States and Canada, 1940-1970” in History of Illustration, and Drawing Lessons from the Famous Artists School are recent publications.

R. Sikoryak is a cartoonist and author of the graphic novels Constitution Illustrated, The Unquotable Trump, Masterpiece Comics and Terms and Conditions (Drawn & Quarterly). His illustrations have appeared on the cover of The New Yorker, The Nation, NY Times Book Review, Fortune, and within many other publications. Sikoryak teaches at Parsons School of Design. Since 1997, he’s presented his live comics performance series, Carousel, around the U.S. and Canada. Visit rsikoryak.com or follow Instagram.com/rsikoryak/.

Christopher Sperandio, half of the artist team of Grennan & Sperandio, has produced comic books as artworks for museums in the U.S. and Europe. Bridging the High/Low divide, these works include Modern Masters, a cross-over comic for the Museum of Modern Art  published by DC Comics. Other works include Life in Prison and the Invisible City, published by Fantagraphics. Sperandio has produced new collaborative artworks in conjunction with museums and art centers in the US, Germany, Northern Ireland, Denmark, England, Scotland, Wales, Spain, and France. Commissioning institutions include MoMA/PS1, the Public Art Fund, Creative Time, London’s Institute of Contemporary Art and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. The  Executive Producer of ARTSTAR, an internationally syndicated documentary television series about emerging contemporary artists, Sperandio is Associate Professor of Drawing and Painting at Rice University in Houston, where he founded the Comic Art Teaching and Study Workshop.

Ryan Standfest is an artist, arts writer, and the editor-in-chief and publisher of Rotland Press, which presents satirical publications of a culturally relevant nature. His publications and prints are in numerous major collections, and his work has been exhibited widely, both in the United States and abroad. Standfest has penned criticism and essays for the Detroit arts and culture journal Infinite Mile, Detroit Art Review, and Essay’d. He contributed a chapter to the book Radical Dreams: Surrealism, Counterculture, Resistance, edited by Elliott H. King and Abigail Susik, forthcoming from Penn State University Press in 2021. Websites: ryanstandfest.com (studio) and rotlandpress.com (publishing).

A symposium organized by the Rockwell Center for American Visual Studies and the Hunter College Department of Art and Art History.

About the Conference:

Conference Location and Date:
Hunter College, CUNY
695 Park Ave., New York, NY
Friday, March 27, 2020
9 a.m. to 5 p.m. with a Reception to Follow

Organized by the Rockwell Center for American Visual Studies at the Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and the Department of Art and Art History at Hunter College, New York City, this one-day interdisciplinary symposium brings together scholars, curators, and artists who are exploring new approaches to the study of illustration within historical and contemporary frameworks.

As a set of practices and a cultural force, illustration emerged in the 19th century as a new and distinctly modern phenomenon. A vital component of the visual languages of advertising, design, publishing, and entertainment, illustration is omnipresent in modern culture, yet its historical, contextual, and theoretical specifics have remained relatively unexamined. This symposium aims to bring together scholars, researchers, and practitioners across multiple fields who are interested in the history, practice, and subjects of illustration, and who want to contribute to the emerging field of illustration studies. It is meant to build on and amplify the important work done at a multi-day symposium on illustration at Washington University in St. Louis in the spring of 2019, also co-sponsored by the Rockwell Center for American Visual Studies.

Read more…

"Most everyone has fallen under the magnetic spell of the American illustrator Garth Williams (1912-1996) at one time or another: as childhood readers, as parents or grandparents, or as professionals concerned with young people and their books. Charlotte’s Web? The Little House on the Prairie? Bedtime for Frances? The Cricket in Times Square? Williams, who was born in New York City and raised in London, illustrated them all—and dozens more children’s classics in a career that spanned nearly fifty years and brought a new level of virtuosity and fun to American children’s books and their illustration.

Garth Williams: Illustrator of the Century, curated by Leonard S. Marcus, is by far the largest retrospective of the artist’s work ever assembled. In addition to presenting original work for twenty-eight of Williams’ most beloved books, the exhibition also explores such lesser-known facets of the artist’s career as Williams’ journeyman efforts as a London portrait artist and New Yorker cartoonist and his occasional forays into advertising. Preliminary drawings offer rare glimpses of Williams the agile and tireless perfectionist at his drawing table, while final art for the Wilder series, Charlotte’s Web, and many others allow us an unexpectedly intimate look at illustration art that we as readers have held dear all our lives.

Williams made it all look so easy. But few illustrators have mustered anything like his powerful arsenal of artistic skills, his intense feeling of tenderness for childhood and the natural world, his infectious wit, or his grand gift for storytelling.

Illustrator of the century indeed!" — Leonard Marcus, Curator

Hundreds of everyday objects including food packaging, ticket stubs and stamps, together with hand-painted propaganda posters and comics, give an unprecedented insight into everyday life in the DPRK.

The exhibition displays the collection of Nicholas Bonner, the foremost expert on North Korean graphic culture, tourism and film, who has led tours to the country for 25 years.

It follows the release of his book Made in North Korea: Graphics from Everyday Life in the DPRK (Phaidon). 

https://www.houseofillustration.org.uk/whats-on/current-future-events/made-in-north-korea-everyday-graphics-from-the-dprk

https://levergallery.com/