Mid-Missouri Comics Collective

St. Louis Cartooning exhibit

Posted by Winter on May 14, 2008

St. Louis is having a big cartooning exhibit based around Dan Martin’s new book: See You in the Funny Papers: The Rich Tradition of St. Louis Cartooning. The exhibit will be up May 17 to August 30 and is being held at the Bellwether Gallery of St. Louis Artists, which is a division of The Sheldon. There will be an opening reception Friday May 16, with cocktails and hors d’oeuvres served from 5-7 p.m. as part of the Grand Center Gallery walk. There will also be a gallery talk and book signing with Dan Marin Saturday, May 31 at 11:00 a.m.

Here’s more about the exhibit from the Grand Center website:

Curated by Dan Martin, designer and illustrator at the St. Louis Post Dispatch, this exhibition chronicles the history of cartooning in the St. Louis area from its historically obscure foundations to the legendary works of Robert Minor, Al Frueh, Harry Tuthill and Chic Young of Blondie fame, among many others. The exhibit also features some of today’s most popular cartoonists like Mike Peters of Mother Goose and Grimm fame and others working in graphic novels and underground ‘zines today. All of the artists included here were either born in or have lived and worked in the St. Louis region, and this exhibit reveals the rich contribution of these talented internationally recognized artists to the history of the medium. It will delight audiences young and old!

The Post-Dispatch has an editorial which talks about the exhibit and it’s origins. This exhibit also has a Columbia tie because the exhibition was made possible in part by MU alumnus Mort Walker.

Dan Martin, in case you didn’t know, draws the Weatherbird for the front page of the St. Louis Post Dispatch. He even wrote a book about the character: The Story of the First 100 Years of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Weatherbird: The Oldest Continuously Running Daily Cartoon in American Journalism.

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