Comics in the Museum

Kim Munson

doi:10.1017/9781009255653.020

Chapter 15 - Comics in the Museum

from Part III - Uses

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 August 2023

Kim Munson

Edited by

Maaheen Ahmed

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Maaheen Ahmed: Affiliation:
Universiteit Gent, Belgium

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Summary

Over the last twenty years, the growing diversity in content and artistic innovation in graphic novels, comic books, and web comics combined with the popularity of films based on comics material have made comic art newly attractive to curators, museums, and university galleries. More artists identified with comics are getting big budget retrospectives, collecting institutions are mounting rich historical shows, and exhibits capitalizing on the popularity of all types of comics are popping up around the world. The chapter maps out the history of influential shows of original comic art from newly rediscovered shows of the 1930s to contemporary blockbusters like High and Low: Modern Art, Popular Culture and Masters of American Comics, as well as the critical dialogue surrounding these shows, who some of the pioneers were, and how exhibition standards have developed over time.

Keywords

comics history exhibit criticism High and Low Milton Caniff R. Crumb Genesis Art Spiegelman Denis Kitchen Trina Robbins

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge Companion to Comics , pp. 308 - 326

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009255653.020 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2023

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