Marc Moorash on Bringing Art Young Back to Life

On Publishing the Previously Unpublished Types of the Old Home Town and Rediscovering the Legacy of the Dean of American Cartoonists

Art Young (1866 – 1943) was the best known political cartoonist in the first half of the twentieth century, but you’ve likely never heard of him.  If you have, you’ve likely never seen much of his work.  Sadly, he’s been mostly forgotten – and the story behind this, as with most Art Young tales, is quite remarkable and unfortunate.  He’s a cartoonist almost legendary, yet nearly become myth.
Yet, let’s jump ahead to the beginning of 2015 and the serendipitous publication of a long-lost manuscript – a collection of images some unpublished, some which appeared in The Saturday Evening Post in the mid-1920s.  A publication in handmade art-book form.  Let’s also throw in that in April of this year we held the first gallery exhibition since 1939 of Art’s works.

Marc Moorash, curator of The Art Young Gallery (housed one mile from where Art built his gallery in Bethel CT in 1928) will talk about publishing Types of the Old Home Town,the handmade book process of making Types, Art’s history and legacy in American cartooning, and show slides of a number of images and photographs that haven’t been seen in public for decades.  In addition, on display will be a number of Art’s original cartoons from his newspaper Good Morning (1919 – 1921), drawings of Helen Keller and Eugene Debs, as well as original illustrations from Types of the Old Home Town.