This permanent exhibit features a selection of exceptional artwork and artifacts highlighting the breadth and depth of our collections.

Twenty-five years ago, six semi-trucks arrived at The Ohio State University. They contained the world’s most comprehensive collection of newspaper comic strips and cartoons, totaling 75 tons of material. Bill Blackbeard, a comics historian, and collector, had amassed this vast and unparalleled collection in his San Francisco home starting in 1967. Discarded by libraries in favor of microfilm, these invaluable historical documents provide a unique view of popular culture at the start of the 20th century, when illustrated newspaper pages and comic strips were at the heart of visual culture and communication. Blackbeard’s heroic efforts to rescue and preserve this material are celebrated in this exhibition, as well as an exploration of the process for printing turn-of-the-century newspapers.

At a time of eroded public faith in traditional news media, comics journalism has emerged as a powerful antidote to disinformation and fake news. Practitioners in this field cover news or nonfiction events using the framework of comics, re-asserting the ethical value of truth-telling, while at the same time highlighting the subjectivity of news coverage in an immediate and accessible way. As such, the best works of comics journalism stand as compelling examples of how the news might be reimagined as an artistic practice.