ON VIEW THROUGH JANUARY 23, 2015
Many of you have noticed that Tony has not been posting cartoons regularly on this site or at WHYY or at GoComics. It is not because nothing has been happening for him to comment on. On July 4th he was hit with a case of neuropathy that left him unable to draw for a few weeks, but he was looking forward to rejoining the conversation soon. Unfortunately he has been battling cancer now for two years, and this week it took a turn for the worse. We do not have the specifics of what the future holds for Tony, but we will keep you up to date on his condition on this site. You can continue to send messages to him at Tony@TonyAuth.com.
For the last three years, one of Tony’s biggest projects has been to find a home for his archive of cartoons. The Tony Auth Archive is an intact, career-spanning collection of his drawings, paintings, sketches, and ephemera that cover the last half century. In addition to its cultural and historical importance, the Auth Archive represents the most complete collection of work of an artist of his stature that I have seen in more than 20 years in the field. Not only is there a virtually uninterrupted series of daily drawings for more than forty years of work, the Archive includes roughs, preliminary sketches, and tear sheets for much of the finished work.
Here’s some details to give you some sense of what Tony’s Archive includes:
• nearly 10,000 editorial cartoons
• more than three dozen sketchbooks
• a complete set of prints and/or engraver negatives for the first thirty years of his career (1971 –2001) at the Philadelphia Inquirer
• high res digital files of editorial cartoons from 2001 to the present
• correspondence with editors, colleagues, and a considerable amount from readers
• earliest work from 1965 for alternative newspapers and UCLA’s Daily Bruin, including syndication material
• ink and watercolor illustrations, ephemera, and virtually every preliminary study (painting or drawing) for children’s books
• all the files of his iPad movies
A special fund has been started at the Philadelphia Foundation to keep this remarkable body of work intact and in Philadelphia. A free exhibition of more than 100 cartoons is on now through January 23, 2015 at the Foundation’s offices at 1234 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA (M-F 9-5) that gives visitors some sense of the richness of his archives. There you will not only see some great cartoons from the last half century, but ones you could swear he drew yesterday, or could draw tomorrow.
Temple University has agreed to become the home of the Archive, where it will exist alongside the Inquirer’s archive and many remarkable collections in the University’s library. After meeting with a number of institutions, Tony felt that Temple was the right place for his lifetime of work.
You can help make that dream come true by supporting the Archive Fund which will go to acquire and maintain the archive. It is planned that the work will be digitized so that people all over the world can learn about Tony’s history, and much more importantly, American and world history over the last 50 years. All donations, big and small, are tax deductible, greatly appreciated and will be acknowledged. With your support we can make this happen!
Click here to make donation:
https://www.philafound.org/tabid/160/Default.aspx?tp=SPEC&fn=The%20Tony%20Auth%20Fund
David Leopold is an author and curator who has organized “To Stir, Inform, & Inflame: The Art of Tony Auth” museum retrospective at the James Michener Art Museum in 2012. He also edited the companion book of cartoons for Camino Press.