Mort Walker’s Cartoon Museum to NYC

Mort Walker looks to be following through on an idea that Editor & Publisher notes he's been bandying about in public for years by renaming his International Museum for Cartoon Art the National Cartoon Museum and securing space in the Empire State Building, with plans to open in 2006. The 31-year-old museum had previously been housed in Connecticut, New York (Rye Brook) and in Florida, locations that counted on the museum becoming a long-term drive-to destination site. Despite modest success, this never happened. The museum's holdings, estimated at 150,000+ pieces, have been in storage since 2002.

Like most pieces featuring Walker -- who probably doesn't get enough credit for this kind of interest in the form -- there are some fine out-of-left-field details that make the article a bouncy read: a cartoonists' meeting in Jamaica, Marvel pledging $1 million in the throes of financial turmoil, and so on. If Walker's museum becomes fully housed in the building that hosted Martin Goodman's comic book company once upon a time, it should give some teeth to the conventional wisdom that New York City is the only place on the East Coast for such a museum. It could also test another piece of conventional wisdom about such a museum, that interest will only ever be high enough for one to survive long-term.
 
posted 3:30 am PST | Permalink
 

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