UNPACKING OUR CHILDHOOD – NONFICTION

ART SPIEGELMAN is one of the world’s most admired and beloved comic artists, best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning Holocaust narrative, Maus. Born in Stockholm in 1948, he began studying cartooning in high school and started drawing professionally at 16. He studied art and philosophy at Harpur College before joining the underground comics movement in the 1960s. He taught history and the aesthetics of comics at the School of Visual Arts in New York from 1979 to 1986, and in 1980 he founded RAW, the acclaimed avant-garde comics magazine, with his wife, Françoise Mouly. He has received induction into the Will Eisner Hall of Fame and the Art Director’s Club Hall of Fame. In 2005, he was named one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People. He was made an Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2007; in 2011 he was awarded the Grand Prix at the Angoulême International Comics Festival; in 2015 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters; and in 2018 he became the first comic artist to receive the Edward MacDowell Medal. His art has been exhibited at museums worldwide, including the Pompidou Center in Paris, the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, Germany, the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Jewish Museum in New York City, and the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art.