With Columbus’ 200th birthday just around the corner, the Wexner Center’s Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum has plans to celebrate not only the city itself, but several cartoonists with Columbus connections.
The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum’s “Columbus Cartoonists: A Bicentennial Celebration” exhibit opens to the public Monday.
The exhibit will include original artwork and artifacts created by cartoonists such as Billy Ireland, Edwina Dumm, Dudley T. Fisher, James Thurber and others from the Columbus area.
“In this bicentennial year, it is important to celebrate the achievements of people associated with the city,” said Lucy Caswell, Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum founding curator and professor emerita, in an email. “The cartoonists who are related to Columbus are a very remarkable group.”
The cartoonists on display at the exhibit come from all walks of life, but share common ground in their connections to Columbus.
The exhibit’s goal is to showcase cartoonists who have “lived, worked or been educated in Columbus, Ohio,” according to the cartoon library website.
For more than 35 years, Billy Ireland drew editorial cartoons for The Columbus Dispatch. He created a caricature of the city, Chris Columbus, who played the lead role in many of his drawings. Ireland was the mentor of many budding cartoonists in the Columbus area.
Claire Bollinger, a first-year graduate student in environmental public health, wants to stop by the exhibit.
“It’s on my radar of things I want to check out,” Bollinger said.
Mitra Jouhari, a first-year in psychology, first went to the cartoon library with a friend studying graphic design.
“For what it is, for what it has to offer, I think it’s a really great thing to have on campus,” Jouhari said. “I think the exhibit sounds really interesting and would be fun to check out.”
