This Friday, the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design will welcome award-winning cartoonist Ben Katchor to present “Reading in Public,” an illustrated history of public reading rooms and libraries in New York City.
WHEN: Friday, April 20, 6:00 PM
WHERE: 230 College Street, Room 103
HOW MUCH: Free
Katchor’s work as an graphic novelist, illustrator, and author focuses on urban lore and the often ignored or unnoticed details that colour our cities. His lecture will tell the story of the earliest public reading rooms in New York City, which were established to offer children an alternative to the luridly illustrated dime novels that were sold in cigar stores and at corner soda fountains. The books offered by the first public reading rooms were devoid of illustrated covers and were intended to improve, rather than excite, young readers.
Author Michael Chabon describes Ben Katchor as “the creator of the last great American comic strip.” Besides his celebrated weekly comic strips, Katchor’s “picture-stories” have been incorporated into musical theatre and a radio show. His regular strip on architecture and urban design has appeared as the back page of Metropolis magazine since 1998. Up From the Stacks, his most recent music-theater collaboration with Mark Mulcahy, was commissioned in 2011 by the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library and Lincoln Center, and was performed at both venues.
In addition to being awarded a Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, Katchor was the first cartoonist to win the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, also known as the “genius grant.” He is the author of five books: Cheap Novelties: The Pleasure of Urban Decay ( 1991), Julius Knipl Real Estate Photographer (1996), The Jew of New York (1998), Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer: The Beauty Supply District (2000), and most recently, The Cardboard Valise (2011).
Katchor’s lecture is being presented in conjunction with the workshop/symposium OP CITY: Figuring the Urban Future, organized jointly by UCLA’s cityLAB and the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design. Visit the Daniels Faculty website for more information.
