Tuesday Spill: Packing Up Mort Gerberg’s Papers

Packing Up Mort Gerberg’s Papers

I’ve visited with just a few colleagues at their studios who were in the pre-stage of sending off their archives to an institution. But until Karen Greene (Curator for Comics and Cartoons at Columbia University Libraries and Librarian/Specialist at Columbia University in the City of New York) posted the series below on Facebook I’d never seen photos of an actual transition. We see Mort Gerberg‘s papers (including original art, notebooks, folders, etc.) located in a storage unit (not his studio) as they were readied for pickup and transfer to Columbia University in New York.

With Karen’s permission I’m showing her photos here (each using her words describing the stages). There’s also a sample of one of the pieces found in the collection — a sketch of Mr. Gerberg by the late Michael Crawford.

I asked Karen a few questions about Mort’s papers. 

Michael Maslin:  Where is the storage unit? (not the address specifically, but is it in NYC?).
 
Karen Greene: The storage unit was in lower Manhattan.
 
MM: You mentioned that Mort had given you other work previously. Is his archive perhaps the largest — or one of the largest — of any (magazine) cartoonist at Columbia?
 
KG: I think his is right up there. Joseph Farris can contend for the record. I’d say that, thinking things over, the Charles Saxon archive can’t be counted out, just because of the sheer number of finished cartoons:
https://findingaids.library.columbia.edu/ead/nnc-rb/ldpd_4079735/dsc#view_all
 
Back when I first was visiting the storage unit, several years ago, I brought a few boxes up in a cab—mostly Koky tearsheets and things from when he was young.
 
 
 
Before packing: 

Packing: 

Compiling the box list: 

After everything was packed:

Waiting for pickup:

Michael Crawford’s portrait of Mort Gerberg: 

________________________________________________________________________

From the Spill ‘s A-Zs… the New Yorker cartoonists mentioned above: 

Mort Gerberg (above) Born, March 11, 1931, New York, NY. New Yorker work: April 10, 1965 – . Co-edited, with Ron Wolin & Ed Fisher, The Art in Cartooning: Seventy-five Years of American Magazine Cartoons ( Charles Scribner & Son, 1975). Essential reading… Mort Gerberg On The Scene: A 50-Year Cartoon Chronicle (Fantagraphics, 2019). Website. 

 

Michael Crawford Born, Oswego, NY., 1941. Died, July 12, 2016, Kingston, NY. New Yorker work: 1984 – 2016 . Ink Spill’s Appreciation. Website:www.michaelcrawford.org/(inactive at the moment). Mr. Crawford Edited and wrote the Introduction to The New Yorker Book of Baseball Cartoons

 

Ed Fisher ( Pictured above, mid 1980s. Photograph by Liza Donnelly) Born, Bronx, New York, October 24,1926. Died, 2013. New Yorker work: 1951 – 2000. Key collections: Ed Fisher’s First Folio (Macmillan, 1959), Ed Fisher’s Domesday Book ( St. Martin’s, 1961)

Charles Saxon (self portrait from Best Cartoons of the Year 1947) Born in Brooklyn, Nov 13, 1920, died in Stamford, Conn., Dec 6, 1988. New Yorker work: 1943 – 1991 (2 drawings published posthumously). Key collection: One Man’s Fancy ( Dodd, Mead, 1977). One of the giants of the New Yorker’s stable of artists. He could do it all: covers, spreads, single panels.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *