Kim Speaking at Laborfest

Evolution of an Emblem: The Arm & Hammer at LARC, Sunday, 7/19/09 at 1:00.

How did the arm & hammer end up on all those baking soda boxes? Art Historian Kim Munson shares her investigation of the origins of the arm & hammer from Greco-Roman myth and its role as an early union label to its current usage as the Socialist Labor Party emblem and as the baking soda trademark. Hosted by the Labor Archives and Research Center, SFSU, 480 Winston Drive, San Francisco, CA 94132. Contact: larc@sfsu.edu Phone: 415-564-4010.

BTW, A while ago I designed an on-line exhibit of union labels for LARC. Some of the graphics in the "promoting the label" section, especially the posters, are really interesting.

PCA/ACA follow up: Masters of Comics and the "Canon"

This post is in response to the lively discussion that followed my presentation Beyond High & Low: How Comics and Museums Learned to Co-Exist at the PCA/ACA conference on Saturday. Talking about Masters of American Comics and his choice to pick an all-male (and pretty much all white) “canon,” John Carlin tells Leslie Jones (Art on Paper magazine) that he realizes that the term “masters” seems like sort of an anachronism in this postmodern age and goes on to explain his thinking:

"This is an old-fashioned type of art exhibition that I would never organize or curate if I working in the art field…I really felt that the canon hadn’t been established in a coherent way. This attempts to do that and to create something that people can then criticize and move beyond. To be designated as a “master” for the purposes of this show you really had to combine two things: one was the highest level of craftsmanship and technical mastery… the other was a kind of formal innovation that added something to the medium so that everybody that comes after him, whether they imitate him or not, has to pay homage to his work."

The article continues with more of his thoughts on the artists and works selected for the show. Another useful article, in which Carlin goes into detail about some of the problems the show faced, was written by Scott Timberg for the LA Times. Lastly, there’s the ArtNews article on female comic artists I mentioned. I believe all these articles are available on J-Stor:

• Carly Berwick. Why Have There Been No Great Women Comic-Book Artists? ArtNews. Vol. 104, No.10 (November 2005). 166-169.


• Leslie Jones. Cracking the Comics Canon. Art on Paper. Vol. 10, No. 2 November/December 2005). 44-49.


• Scott Timberg. An uneasy accord: L.A. museums open their walls to comics as true works of art. Is it long overdue, still an odd mix, or simply inviting cartoonists to a party they might not want to attend? Los Angeles Times. October 23, 2005. E33.

I admit that I wish that the curators could have found a way to be more inclusive, but as a researcher/curator myself, I also know that you can never include everything you'd like, and that it's assumed that someone else is either going to argue with or build on your work. Starting a dialog seems to be what it's all about (or is it the Hokey-Pokey? I get confused...)
Thanks for all the great questions!

MFA's Show Off at SFSU

2009 Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition at the Fine Arts Gallery, San Francisco State University (April 18 - May 15)

The 2009 MFA show features 8 artists completing a three-year master of fine arts degree program. They are: Wendy Crittenden (to the left is Wendy's big boy, 2009, film-based image printed as wallpaper), Eilish Cullen, Tom Griscom, Michael Namkung, Rosie Sesler, Clare Szydlowski, Allison Tungeth and Tyson Washburn. Opening reception: Saturday April 18th from 1-3pm.

Arthur Danto Leaves "The Nation"

I was concerned when I saw this blurb that one of my literary heroes, Arthur Danto, has left The Nation magazine, where he has been the art critic since 1984. Everytime I read one of his articles, I vow yet again that I'm going to make my way through his entire body of work, but he's so prolific that I don't know if I'm up to the challenge! I don't know Mr. Danto, but I wish him the best.

Hobos to Street People at CHS

Earlier this week, I had a nice visit with my friend Lisa Eriksen at the California Historical Society, who gave me a tour of their current exhibition Hobos to Street People: Artists' Responses to Homelessness from the New Deal to the Present (February 19- August 15, 2009) which features works by New Deal-era artists such as Dorothea Lange, Rockwell Kent, and Giacomo Patri along with contemporary artists such as Sandow Birk, David Bacon, and Christine Hanlon. I was amazed and impressed by the range of work in this show and astonished to learn that admission is FREE (donations appreciated :-).

CHS has many events of interest planned concurrent with the show (calendar here), including artist talks with printmakers and photographers. One that is of particular interest to me is on July 2nd, called The History of Public Funding and the Arts – the Legacy of the New Deal. The speakers are murals/public art scholar Tim Drescher, labor graphics specialist/author Lincoln Cushing and Mark Johnson, director of the Fine Arts Gallery at SFSU. The panel will be moderated by Dr. Gray Brechin, project scholar for the California’s Living New Deal Project. “Funding public artwork benefits more than the artists – viewers witness their space transformed as the art enhances the urban landscape,” states the CHS site, “The arts were greatly supported during the New Deal era and many WPA projects are located in the San Francisco Bay Area. With the recent election of a new president, will money be used to fund art and culture? Panelists speak to the similarities between the present era and the New Deal as they relate to public arts and government funding.” With the economy very much on everyone’s mind, I find the topic very timely.

Comic Art Show - Impera et Divide

I recently learned of a comic art show I wish I could see called Impera et Divide. It’s at the Second Street Gallery in Charlottesville, VA focusing “on contemporary international comics and sequential art with a highlight on a group of artists who come at comics from a different angle - combining sequences of images and words to create graphic poems rather than graphic novels. Relying on destabilizing and decentering strategies, this work offers rich, multivalent, and at times baffling reading experiences.” On this blog, you can see pages for the individual artists, and reviews that include a slideshow/walkthrough and a video.The artists included in the show are: Frédéric Coché, Ae-rim Lee, André Lemos, Ilan Manouach, Andrei Molotiu, Fabio Zimbres (this is one of his pieces on the left). This show is curated by U.S. artist Warren Craghead III and Portuguese critic Pedro Moura.

Children, Comics and Newspapers

As is the case with many metropolitan newspapers, the San Francisco Chronicle is in trouble, and many readers have sent letters to the editor offering suggestions or reminiscing. In today’s paper, under the headline If only children read the funnies..., Richard J. Roberts of Placer County writes “I recall starting to read the funnies section in The Chronicle about 1923, when I was 5 years old. From there, it was on to the old Sporting Green when I was in high school. I still wonder what happed to Jiggs and Maggie and I still read Peanuts each day. From there, it was on to the local and world news... None of my six grandchildren, ages 11 through 26, have ever read the funnies, as they have grown up watching SpongeBob etc. on TV and now on the internet. No one ever introduced them to the funnies. So it’s logical then, to blame your dwindling circulation on the funnies.”

I know this is true of me; I started my daily newspaper habit when my father gave me the comics section of the Detroit Free Press. We would sit together every morning over coffee and donuts reading. It’s easy to blame TV and the net for this, but it seems like such a long decline that I think it must be more complicated than that. Maybe this has more to do with families not having breakfast together anymore, or changes in family communication. I don’t know, but I think this relationship between children, comics & the decline of newspapers is an interesting topic of discussion.

Last year, I was in a labor studies class at CCSF taught by Fred Glass. He asked the class, which consisted of about 35 historians, union members and labor activists, “how many subscribe to a newspaper?” I was the only one! Maybe I’m a real dinosaur in this context, but I still love my morning comics (and news) with my coffee. I would hate to see us grow fully dependent on CNN, Fox News and the Wall Street Journal as the only survivors.