Exhibits Graphic Journalism

The Art of The News: Comics Journalism

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D. D. Degg November 28, 2021 1 minute 0 comments

The Art of the News: Comics Journalism opens at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art in the Fall of 2021. At a time of eroded public faith in traditional news media, comics journalism has emerged as a powerful antidote to the dissemination of inaccurate information and fake news. Practitioners in this field re-assert the ethical value of truth-telling, while at the same time foregrounding the inevitably subjective dimensions involved in any act of witnessing.

What is Comics Journalism? © Dan Archer

The Art of the News is the first major retrospective devoted to this increasingly influential genre of visual narrative. The exhibition spotlights original artwork and artifacts representing over thirty years of reportage by New York Times best-selling author-artist Joe Sacco, a foundational figure in the field—and a graduate of the UO. Accompanying Sacco’s groundbreaking work are key pieces from an international group of artists who have developed comics journalism and are pushing the genre in new directions, including Gerardo Alba, Dan Archer, Thi Bui, Tracy Chahwan, Jesús Cossio, Sarah Glidden, Omar Khouri, Victoria Lomasko, Sarah Mirk, Ben Passmore, Yazan al-Saadi, and Andy Warner.    

Footnotes in Gaza © Joe Sacco

Steve Duin, at The Oregonian, reviews the exhibit.

“The Art of the News” is curated by Kate Kelp-Stebbins, a University of Oregon Comics Studies professor.

“For me,” Kelp-Stebbins says, “journalism at its best is a deep dedication to finding out what is happening in the world, and reporting that back in a way that is ethical and meaningful.”

At the heart of that argument is Joe Sacco, who has spent much of his artistic life on the ground in Bosnia and Palestine, documenting conflicts and atrocities.