The exhibition “Hey, Kids! Comics!” will open Oct. 9 at the Eisentrager•Howard Gallery in Richards Hall. The exhibition, which is free and open to the public, continues through Oct. 23. An opening reception will be 5-7 p.m. Oct. 9 in the gallery.
The exhibition is curated by Richard Graham and Bob Hall. Graham, associate professor of university libraries and English, is teaching “A History of Comics,” an art history course, this semester. Hall, a UNL graduate student and well-known comic artist, is teaching “Sequential Drawing.”
In his curator statement, Hall wrote, “Ignored for years by critics and scholars, comics were once the most discardable of forms, considered not quite art and not quite literature. Not so anymore. It turns out that comics were a secret and not so guilty pleasure, certainly for kids but also for adults of all sorts, including college professors. One of these was UNL’s Dan Howard, an accomplished painter who spent a good deal of his spare time collecting the very best examples of comic book art. In 2000, he donated much of his extensive collection to Sheldon Museum of Art. This collection will be shown in UNL’s Eisentrager•Howard Gallery, providing a unique opportunity to view the history of comic art from Krazy Kat to Buck Rogers to The Adventures of Superman. The exhibit will be supplemented with works from the collection of comic artist Bob Hall.”
Hall is the co-creator of the West Coast Avengers for Marvel Comics. He also worked on such series as Armed and Dangerous and Shadowman, both of which he wrote and drew for Valiant Comics. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in theatre from UNL and is the artistic director of the Flatwater Shakespeare Company in Lincoln.
Gallery hours for the exhibition are 12:30 to 4:30 p.m. Monday-Friday.
Admission to the gallery is free and open to the public.
For more information, call 402-472-5522.
