Mark your calendars and register early. Space is limited to 275 participants.
Registration for the 2010 Festival of Cartoon Art organized by The Ohio State University Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum will open on June 1, 2010. The Festival, which is a celebration of cartoons and comics, will take place October 14-17. Online registration, along with a complete schedule of all Festival events, is now available at the new 2010 Festival website.
The registration fee will be $125, with an early bird discount of $20 (must register by August 1, 2010). Members of the National Cartoonists Society and the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists will be able to register at the reduced rate of $100 (early bird discount will also apply). The registration fee for students and senior citizens aged 65 and over will be $25 (ID will be required; early bird discount will not apply).
This is the tenth triennial Festival organized by the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum (formerly the Cartoon Research Library). An academic symposium will once again kick-off the Festival events. Humor, Play and Indentity: Academic Perspectives will take place on Thursday, October 14 at the Ohio Union and will end with a keynote address on George Herriman by author Michal Tisserand. That evening, all Festival participants are invited to celebrate the 100th birthday of Krazy Kat at a special exhibition reception and birthday party.
Creators scheduled to present at the Festival on Friday, October 15 and Saturday, October 16 are Steve Breen, Roz Chast, Tony Cochran, Jan Eliot, Matt Groening and Tom Gammill, Dave Kellett, Paul Levitz, Dan Piraro, Jen Sorensen, James Sturm, and Gene Luen Yang. The Festival will also feature a special tribute panel to Jay Kennedy, the late Editor in Chief of King Features Syndicate. Kennedy was a collector and scholar who bequeathed his extraordinary collection of underground comics to the library. Panelists include Brendan Burford, Bill Griffith, Matt Groening, and Patrick McDonnell.
In addition to these events, Wexner Residency Award Recipient Art Spiegelman will give a special presentation on Sunday, October 17.
Two cartoon exhibitions will be on display during the Festival. Ireland of the Dispatch, a retrospective of the work of Billy Ireland, will be held in the Exhibition Gallery of the spectacular and newly-renovated Thompson Library. Scenes of My Infint-hood: Celebrating the Birth of Krazy Kat will be exhibited in the Cartoon Library & Museum Reading Room Gallery.
The 2010 Festival is co-sponsored by the Wexner Center for the Arts. It is also made possible by the generous support of the National Cartoonists Society Foundation, King Features Syndicate, the Milton Caniff Endowment, the Mark J. Cohen and Rose Marie McDaniel Endowment, United Features Syndicate and Mary F. Gau and Kevin Wolf. Thursday’s Academic Perspectives symposium is co-sponsored by Project Narrative of The Ohio State University Department of English and the Popular Culture Program of the College of Arts and Sciences. Thursday night’s exhibition reception will be co-sponsored by the Great Lakes Chapter of the National Cartoonists Society.