[...] notion of an online exhibition of webcomics makes Johanna Draper Carlson scratch her head at Comics Worth Reading, but there is an explanation [...]

And sometimes single artist shows work to greater advantage – just last summer, there was a nifty show of Joe Staton artwork in Pittsfield, MA that got a bit of coverage and was actually so successful the gallery held it over for a month.

Actually, though, when asked to do the web comics thing, I insisted on interviews being a part of it, since that might give people already familiar with this stuff some area of interest in taking a look – plus, it gave me an excuse to chat with people whose work I like, always a bonus.

Thanks for explaining a bit more of the background.

Having kiosks in that gallery and another one means that people who visit other, non-comics shows will have the opportunity to be exposed to some of this work even though they might never care to outside of that experience.

Here in the Berkshires of Massachusetts, there has been a small movement to include comics in the realm of contemporary art and this is just really a small first step on my and the gallery’s part – hopefully all our efforts will not remain digital. My neighbor is Howard Cruse, who shows his work around here a lot, and was part of a very nice graphic novel show at the Norman Rockwell Museum that also featured Jessica Abel, Dave Sim, lots of others.

Also, this spring, Mass MoCA will have a show that all the work is entirely presented in graphic novel form.

So for us, it’s just a matter of promoting an art form that we love – the gallery owners have both worked in comics, as well as myself and my wife, and our tastes cross through that and the gallery art world. There is some snobby resistance on the part of the gallery world toward not just cartoonists, but illustrators in general. Many of the web cartoonists involved are eager to show their work in a “physical” show here – as am I. The web incarnation may help that happen!

Oh, fyi, I didn’t convince anyone to do this – the gallery came up with the idea and ask me. Every week for the past couple years, I’ve reviewed graphic novels in my paper here – my understanding is that it’s a very unusual thing for a daily paper to do. But that’s one of the things I’m best known for in this region, so it doesn’t surprise me that they would ask me, they know how passionate I am about promoting comics as an art and literary form.

I guess what makes me scratch my head at this one is that it’s not an exhibit of physical things but of webcomics. They’re already available to everyone online by definition. Setting up an exhibition just seems like a fancy way of trying to make one person’s link list seem more important.

Thanks for the examples!

check out the Textile Museum: http://www.textilemuseum.org/exhibitions/current.htm

and

The National Portrait Gallery’s “Let Your Motto Be Resistance”:
http://www.npg.si.edu/exhibit/motto/