Revisiting The Comic Art Show at SDCC

A quick note related to my on-going project exploring the relationships between comic art, fine art and museums: I am currently researching The Comic Art Show, which happened at the downtown branch of the Whitney Museum in New York over the summer of 1983. This show, co-curated by John Carlin (co-curator of Masters of American Comics in 2005) and Sheena Wagstaff (currently the chief curator at the Tate Modern), was one of the first to display comic art and fine art as equal works in a US art museum setting.

August Update: Since I originally posted this, I have presented on this show at PCA/ACA and WonderCon as part of a general "comics in museums" talk, and have more specifically presented on this show with new research at San Diego Comic Con 2009. You can view both of these presentations using the SlideShare widget on the sidebar, or at the bottom of this page. I have written generally about this show in the article Beyond High & Low: How Comics and Museums Learned to Co-exist, which will be published in the upcoming issue of the IJOCA. Since writing that article, I have done research at the Frances Mulhill Achilles Library at the Whitney Museum, and have interviewed John Carlin, Sheena Wagstaff and Anne Philbin, as well as delving into the art scene and art criticism of the 1980's. I expect to complete the article fall 2009.

Update 3/2012 - I have committed to finally finishing my research on this topic and publishing it in the IJOCA for the fall/winter 2012 issue.