Krazy Kat exhibition posters (University of Arizona Museum of Art)

About this work

These two exhibition posters were produced in 1972 for Krazy Kat: Original Cartoon Drawings by George Herriman at the University of Arizona Museum of Art, one of the early museum‑level shows devoted to Herriman’s work. Each poster enlarges a color Krazy Kat scene against a broad field of yellow, placing Herriman’s drawing at the visual center and framing it with simple black typography that announces the artist, the strip, and the exhibition dates. As printed ephemera, the posters document how museums in the 1970s began to frame newspaper comic strips as serious art, a context that is especially important for Herriman as a pioneering early‑20th‑century Black cartoonist working within mainstream American newspapers. Within The Askia Jones Collection, the pair functions as historical support material alongside original comics and illustration, marking Krazy Kat’s transition from the funny pages into the museum space and into the broader story of Black contributions to comic art.