:: 415-CAR-TOON :: 655 Mission Street ::
The Cartoon Art Museum is committed to fostering and promoting a greater appreciation of cartoon art.
This it achieves through collecting, cataloging, preserving and displaying the finest representations of original cartoon art as well as providing innovative educational programs designed to enrich the cultural life of our community.
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Current Exhibits



Sex
and Sensibility

Ten Women Examine the Lunacy of Modern Love

February 9 - June 8, 2008

The Cartoon Art Museum's latest exhibition showcases work by ten of the funniest cartoonists in America, eight of whom regularly publish in The New Yorker, along with two Pulitzer Prize winning editorial artists. Opening February 9, 2008, Sex and Sensibility comments on the many humorous aspects of sex, love and everything else that's amusing about relationships today. The exhibition features 50 cartoons from Liza Donnelly's upcoming book Sex and Sensibility: Ten Women Examine the Lunacy of Love in 200 Cartoons. The book will be published in April 2008 by Twelve Books, an imprint of Grand Central Books.

Beyond the laughs, the creators of this collection of cartoons and essays offer a perceptive portrait of how gender roles and attitudes are changing with the times, whether the subject is sex through texting, lesbian erotica, the new rules of dating, sexual politics, or procreation (for example, Barbara Smaller's cartoon: "I plan on having a baby one day but I'm waiting for the right technology to come along") .

This exhibition runs through June 8, 2008, and features cartoons by Roz Chast, Liza Donnelly, Carolita Johnson, Marisa Acocella Marchetto, Victoria Roberts, Barbara Smaller, Julia Suits, Ann Telnaes, Kim Warp, and Signe Wilkinson.

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Farley’s San Francisco Chronicles:
A Salute to Phil Frank


April 6 - September 14, 2008

The Cartoon Art Museum celebrates the life and legacy of one of the San Francisco Bay Area's most beloved cartoonists in a special retrospective, Farley’s San Francisco Chronicles: A Salute to Phil Frank. The exhibition includes original art from his nationally syndicated comic strip The Elderberries, panels from Road and Track magazine, his college strip Frankly Speaking, several rarely seen and unpublished works, and his signature comic strip, Farley.

Starting in 1975, first as a nationally syndicated cartoon titled Travels with Farley and, for the last 22 years, as a local feature of the San Francisco Chronicle, Farley was the only local daily comic strip in the country. With this format, a cartoon responding to late-breaking news can appear in the paper for the next day's edition. When syndicated, the lag time between drawing the feature and its appearance in print was five weeks.

About Phil Frank:

Phil Frank, the creator of the comic strips Farley and The Elderberries passed away in September, 2007 after a battle with brain cancer. He is greatly missed by family, friends and fans alike.

Phil was a resident of Sausalito, just across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco, since 1972 along with his wife Susan. Both of his children, Stacy Frank and Phil Frank have benefitted from a creative upbringing - each are active in artistic careers as well.

Phil's cartoon illustration, either incorporating characters from the comic strip or drawings designed for the specific client have illustrated materials for the de Young Museum, the S.F. City Treasurer, Small Business Bureau, minority businesses, BART, the San Francisco Giants, the San Francisco Water Conservation department, numerous regional utility companies and extensive educational materials for Yosemite National Park.

Phil has had long ties to the park system, initiated by the comic strip. He's a member of the board of the Yosemite Association and is an honorary California State Park Ranger. Susan Frank wrote a series of four guidebooks to National Parks (Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Muir Woods) that Phil illustrated. This well received series will be reissued by Avalon Publishers by 2008.

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Upcoming Events

April Cartoonist-in-Residence:

David Crosland


The Cartoon Art museum hosts David Crosland, artist and co-creator of the comic book Puffed, on Saturday, April 19th from 1:00 to 3:00 pm, as part of its ongoing Cartoonist-in-Residence program. Museum visitors will be offered the chance to watch Crosland at work and chat with him about cartooning.

Dave Crosland enjoys peanut butter, road trips, and samurai flicks. He dislikes yogurt and mosquitoes. Since graduating from The Columbus College of Art and Design in 2000, this delicious youngster's art has appeared in comic books, such as Slop: Analecta, The Popgun Anthology, Puffed, and Scarface: Scarred For Life. He's also done a wide amount of work outside of comics, creating album covers for Gym Class Heroes and hip-hop guru Blueprint, a stage backdrop for Incubus, concert posters, tattoo flash, and designs for indie apparel and panties. Dave has painted live and shown fine art across the country, in places like Gallery 1988 (SF/LA), 111 Minna (SF), Copro Nason (LA), Meltdown (LA), The Metro (Chicago), and Club Deville (Austin). Crosland's clients include IDW Publishing, Image Comics, Atlantic Records, Ride Snowboards, and Mad Magazine. His most recent comics work is the dark comedy/horror series, Everybody's DEAD, a classic "misfit fraternity vs. zombie hordes" tale with a twist.

Crosland currently dwells in New San Francisco with his special ladyfriend and their dog, Yoshimi. For more of his visual vermouth, visit www.hiredmeat.com.

This event is free and open to the public.

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Celebrate 20 years of
Lloyd Dangle’s Troubletown

Thursday, May 8, 2008 from 7pm to 9pm
$5 General Public, Free for Cartoon Art Museum Members


The Cartoon Art Museum proudly presents an evening with Lloyd Dangle, creator of the nationally-syndicated weekly political cartoon Troubletown, for a special presentation celebrating Troubletown’s 20th anniversary. Join Dangle for a slideshow featuring highlights from the past two decades of his award-winning comic, followed by a Q&A session and booksigning. General admission to this presentation is $5, and the event is free to Cartoon Art Museum members.

Dangle will be signing copies of his latest release, Troubletown: Told You So: Comics That Could’ve Saved Us From This Mess, featuring 196 pages of Lloyd Dangle at his best, caustically comic stripping the Bush administration’s lead up and mishandling of the war in Iraq, without sparing the enabling Democrats, the media, the Mullahs, the corporate overlords, or the squawking chicken hawks. Not simply controversial for controversy’s sake, Troubletown cartoons turn one CNN talking point after another on its head––with a screwball logic all their own. Troubletown is frequently praised as the funniest comic strip in the alternative press.

About Lloyd Dangle:

Lloyd Dangle’s cartoons and illustrations have appeared in over 100 magazines and newspapers of every type from the crusty corporate mainstream to the bleeding, subcommercial edge. He has been featured in publications including American Lawyer, Cosmopolitan, Entertainment Weekly, The San Francisco Chronicle, Shape, Sierra, Mother Jones, The Nation, The New York Times, Outside, Time Magazine, Utne Reader, The Village Voice and Wired. His drawings adorn the packaging of Airborne effervescent cold remedy, which the company claims is one fastest-selling products in retail history, and he was the first cartoonist assigned to cover the Republican National Convention in New York City armed with nothing but a pen and sketchbook. The resulting cartoon was selected for Houghton Mifflin’s series The Best American Comics. When not on the road covering bizarre and dangerous political events, he works out of his converted garage in Oakland, California

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© Creig Flessel

Bay Area Spotlight
Featuring: Creig Flessel

February 2 - June 1, 2008

The Cartoon Art Museum is honored to celebrate the life and work of cartoonist Creig Flessel with a special exhibition opening on Flessel's 96th birthday, February 2, 2008. The exhibition will include over 30 examples from Flessel¹s long creative career, including original comic book artwork from the 1930s, newspaper advertisements from the 1950s, comic strips from the 1960s, Playboy cartoons from the 1980s and recent commissioned artwork from the 1990s onward.

A panel discussion honoring Flessel will take place at the upcoming WonderCon comic and popular culture convention which will be held February 22-24, 2008 at San Francisco's Moscone Center. For more information on this event, please visit Comic-Con International's official website, www.comic-con.org.

About Creig Flessel

Creig Flessel (born February 2, 1912, in Huntington, Long Island, New York) began his cartooning career with DC Comics in 1935, and was a prolific cover artist in the earliest days of the medium, including work on the seminal titles Detective Comics and More Fun Comics. After his tenure at DC Comics, he spent many years illustrating ads for the Johnstone and Cushing Advertising Company. In the following decades, Flessel's work appeared in such diverse publications as Boys' Life, Clues Detective Stories and Playboy, as well as the syndicated comic strip feature David Crane.

In 2000, Flessel and his wife Marie moved from the East Coast to Mill Valley, California, where he continues to create art for local events and talent shows. Among his many achievements, Flessel received a Comic-Con International Inkpot Award in 1991, and was honored with the National Cartoonists Society Silver T-Square Award for Extraordinary Service in 1992. In October 2007, Flessel received the Sparky Award from the Cartoon Art Museum and the Charles M. Schulz Museum.

About the Small Press Spotlight:

San Francisco has been a hotbed of innovative, groundbreaking comic art since the late 1800s with the advent of the modern comic strip.  In the1960s, the Bay Area gained further notoriety when cartoonists like Robert Crumb, Spain Rodriguez, S. Clay Wilson and Trina Robbins launched the underground comix movement from San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district. Today, some of the biggest names in alternative and small-press comics hail from the Bay Area, and the Cartoon Art Museum's Small Press Spotlight will focus on these talented individuals.

The Small Press Spotlight is funded in part by The Zellerbach Family Foundation and The Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation.

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See Upcoming Exhibits

See Upcoming Events


© Andy Hartzell

Small Press Spotlight
Featuring: Andy Hartzell


May 10 - August 10, 2008

Beginning on May 10, 2008, the Cartoon Art Museum's ongoing Small Press Spotlight will feature the art of Andy Hartzell.

Andy Hartzell has been spinning stories in a variety of media for all his life. Some of his earliest memories involve turning empty stamp-books into little comics. In third grade, he commandeered the school ditto machine to churn out sheaves of single-panel gags for the benefit of his classmates. But it wasn’t until his college years, when he discovered the work of comics pioneers like George Herriman and Robert Crumb, that he was turned on to the real potential of the medium.

Hartzell is a partisan of cartoony cartoons. He likes characters that can only function as squiggles on paper. He likes stories that openly revel in symbols and stereotypes, setting up expectations and knocking them down. He likes the way cartoon icons can penetrate through layers of rational consciousness to connect with our most basic fears and desires. And it’s a plus if they’re funny.

Hartzell’s first completed graphic novel was published by Top Shelf Productions in 2007. Fox Bunny Funny is a twisty little wordless fable that pits social violence against secret desire. It was praised as “a jewel of design and comedy” by the New York Times Book Review and went on to win last year’s Maisie Kukoc Award (along with his mini-comic The Rise and Fall of Yip the Wonder Dog).

Monday, a Garden-of-Eden fantasia, plays out the eternal struggle between Creativity and Control through a brand new adventure starring the world’s oldest characters. Issue #2 of this ongoing story was nominated for an Ignatz Award.

Hartzell’s work has been featured in a number of anthologies, including Boy Trouble and the most recent issue of Papercutter. His weekly strip Fool’s Paradise ran in several alternative weeklies during the second half of the 1990s, and his self-published comic Bread & Circuses was a 1995 Xeric winner.

About the Small Press Spotlight:

San Francisco has been a hotbed of innovative, groundbreaking comic art since the late 1800s with the advent of the modern comic strip.  In the1960s, the Bay Area gained further notoriety when cartoonists like Robert Crumb, Spain Rodriguez, S. Clay Wilson and Trina Robbins launched the underground comix movement from San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district. Today, some of the biggest names in alternative and small-press comics hail from the Bay Area, and the Cartoon Art Museum's Small Press Spotlight will focus on these talented individuals.

The Small Press Spotlight is funded in part by The Zellerbach Family Foundation and The Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation.

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Cartooning Classes


© Brian Kolm

Saturday Afternoon
Cartooning Classes
at the Cartoon Art Museum


UPCOMING CLASS DATES:

June 21
July 12


Saturday afternoon cartooning classes will be held throughout the spring and summer months from 1pm to 3pm at the Cartoon Art Museum. The attendance fee for each student is $5, which covers the student's admission to the museum and the cost of art supplies. Students will learn a wide variety of skills in each class, with subjects ranging from character design to storyboarding to creating their own mini-comics. These classes are recommended for students from 8-14 years old.

For the most up to date scheduling information, please contact CAM Gallery Manager Andrew Farago at gallery@cartoonart.org or by telephone at (415) CAR-TOON [227-8666], ext. 314.

Advance reservations are recommended, but not mandatory.  Classes will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis.

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Cartoon Art Museum
named two years in a row!
"Best Museum of 2005"
in SF Weekly's annual
"Best of San Francisco"
Issue. Check out the
May 11-05 edition of SF Weekly!



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Serial Boxes:
Lectures and Literature
JCCSF, Arts & Ideas 2008

Marjane Satrapi
In conversation with Barbara Lane, JCCSF Director of Lectures & Literature
Tuesday, April 8
8:00 PM

Chris Ware and Art Spiegelman
In Conversation
Tuesday, April 29
8:00 PM

Peter Kuper
In conversation with monologist Josh Kornbluth
Monday, May 5
8:00 PM

Ben Katchor
In conversation with monologist Josh Kornbluth
Monday, May 12
8:00 PM

For more information and to purchase tickets, visit JCCSF.org


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Cartoon Art Museum Creators' Group

Attention Bay Area Cartoonists!

The Cartoon Art Museum hosts Creators' Group meetings of local cartoonists four to six times a year, featuring guest speakers on a variety of topics ranging from self-publishing and self-promotion to tax advice and grant writing.

To receive more information about these meetings and other events for local cartoonists, please e-mail Cartoon Art Museum Gallery Manager Andrew Farago at gallery@cartoonart.org 

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Check out our blog:
cartoonart.livejournal.com

Join the Cartoon Art Museum MySpace page:
www.myspace.com/cartoonartmuseum

The Cartoon Art Museum is supported in part by the following grants:

Grants for the Arts

Community Fund of Sonoma County

San Francisco Foundation

San Francisco Department of Children, Youth and their Families

San Francisco Arts Commission

Fleishhacker Foundation

Zellerbach Family Foundation

Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation

Stuppin Fund for the Arts

Diane B. Wilsey

Louis R. Lurie Foundation

Andrews McMeel Universal Foundation

Muller Family Foundation

We would like to thank these organizations for their support in helping us achieve our mission.

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Cartoon Art Museum
655 Mission Street
San Francisco, CA
94105

Phone: 415/CAR-TOON (415/227-8666)

 

Hours: Daily 11:00 - 5:00,
Closed Monday

Also closed on the following holidays: New Years Day, Easter, July 4, Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Admission Prices:
$6.00 - Adults
$4.00 - Students & Seniors
$2.00 - Children (ages 6 - 12)
FREE - Children (age 5 & below)

The first Tuesday of every calendar month is "Pay What You Wish Day."

Maintained by
Jessica Chen
Updated 5/10/08

©2002-2008 Cartoon Art Museum