24 August 2019 – 15 March 2020 / A Mile and a Half of Lines: The Art of James Thurber, on exhibit at the Columbus Museum of Art. Celebrating the 125th anniversary of James Thurber’s birth, A Mile and a Half of Lines showcases the drawings of James Thurber, Columbus’s native son and one of America’s best-known twentieth-century writers. The exhibition is organized by the Columbus Museum of Art with Curator-at-Large Carole Genshaft and Guest Curator Michael J. Rosen and is part of the Year of Thurber, a year-long, community wide celebration honoring Thurber's 125th birthday and the 35th anniversary of Thurber House.
Thurber’s depictions changed the nature of cartooning. His process of drawing his illustrations spontaneously with child-like abandon was an innovation to his field. For him, the drawing often came first before the caption.
“With one-line captions and drawings of few lines, James Thurber changed the character of cartooning in America,” said Guest Curator Michael Rosen. “It’s easily argued that he was the first to introduce a spontaneous, unstudied line into America art. This is the first exhibition to assemble inimitable, pre-intentional drawings by the humorist most mentioned with Mark Twain in the canon of humor.”
Monday 9 September 2019 “James Thurber: Fabulist for Our Time,” New York Public Library, Grand Central Branch, 6 pm
Tuesday 10 September 2019 “James Thurber: Fabulist for Our Time,” New York Public Library Mulberry Street Branch, 5:30 pm
Wednesday 11 September 2019 “James Thurber: Fabulist for Our Time,” New York Public Library, St. Agnes Branch, 5:30 pm
Thursday 12 September 2019 , “Forty Years in James Thurber’s Footprints,” 5 pm, location to be determined
Friday 25 October TO BE RESCHEDULED SOON The Society of Illustrators, A Thurber Evening with New Yorker cartoonists Danny Shanahan, Liza Donnelly, Michael Maslin, and editor Michael J. Rosen. Here's a link to their event.
And below, just a selection of cheerful tidbits that I'm passing along...
Outrageous Animal Adaptations, a middle-grade nonfiction books about a couple dozen creatures' bizarre survival strategies was just named a Bank Street Best Book of the Year.
I'm proud to be a part of Doug Swift's video created for Foot by Foot:
An article for Edible Columbus, on poetry, meals, hiking, yoga. "Increasingly, I value 'stillness.' Still here—I’ll take it! Still hopeful. (Beats the alternative.) Spend more time being still, staying still, sitting still and my own quirky notion: seeing still."