Join Curator Caitlin McGurk at the Bexley Public Library for a talk about the art and life of trailblazing feminist cartoonist Barbara Shermund, who is featured in the exhibition and McGurk’s new book Tell Me a Story Where the Bad Girl Wins: The Life and Art of Barbara Shermund, on display at the Decorative Arts Center of Ohio September 21-December 29, 2024. 

Barbara Shermund was one of the first women cartoonists to work for The New Yorker. Beginning there in 1925, she contributed nine covers and hundreds of cartoons to the magazine, and later became a celebrated mainstay at  Esquire. Shermund’s cartoons had a fierce and feminist electricity rarely seen in that era of male dominated cartooning. This exhibit celebrates the life and work of this essential cartoonist.

 Click HERE to learn more about the exhibit and The Decorative Arts Center of Ohio.

Thank you to Gramercy Books, who will be onsite for book sales.

More about the Curator and Author: 

Caitlin McGurk is the Curator of Comics and Cartoon Art at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum and Associate Professor at The Ohio State University. McGurk’s scholarship and exhibitions center around the work of women in comics, alternative and underground comics, and early American comic strips. She lives in an old house in Columbus, Ohio. Tell Me a Story Where the Bad Girl Wins: The Life and Art of Barbara Shermund is her first book.

To get updates about this event from Bexley Public Library, please register here.

Tell Me a Story Where the Bad Girl Wins was funded in part by an Ohio Humanities Ignite Grant.

Curious about other grants? Visit our calendar or browse our list of grantees!