On Friday, April 20th, the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design is pleased to welcome award-winning cartoonist Ben Katchor to present “Reading in Public,” an illustrated history of public reading rooms and libraries in New York City.

Date: Friday, April 20

Time: 6:00 PM

Location: 230 College Street, Room 103

Here in Toronto, the role that libraries play in our communities has recently been the subject of much public discussion and debate. Katchor — whose work as an graphic novelist, illustrator, and author focuses on urban lore and the often ignored or unnoticed details that colour our cities — will tell the story of the earliest public reading rooms in New York City. Established to offer children an alternative to the luridly illustrated dime novels that were sold in cigar stores and at corner soda fountains, the books offered by the first public reading rooms were devoid of illustrated covers and were intended to improve, rather than excite, the young reader.

The author Michael Chabon describes Ben Katchor as "the creator of the last great American comic strip.”  Besides his celebrated weekly comic strips, Katchor’s “picture-stories” have been incorporated into musical theatre and a radio show. His regular strip on architecture and urban design has appeared as the back page of Metropolis magazine since 1998. Up From the Stacks, his most recent music-theater collaboration with Mark Mulcahy, was commissioned in 2011 by the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library and Lincoln Center, and was performed at both venues.

In addition to being awarded a Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, Katchor was the first cartoonist to win the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, also known as the “genius grant.” He is the author of  five books: Cheap Novelties: The Pleasure of Urban Decay (1991), Julius Knipl Real Estate Photographer (1996), The Jew of New York (1998), Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer: The Beauty Supply District (2000), and most recently, The Cardboard Valise (2011).

Katchor’s lecture is being presented in conjunction with the workshop/symposium OP CITY: Figuring the Urban Future, organized jointly by UCLA’s cityLAB and the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design. April 20th and 21st, the Daniels Faculty will host a group of designers, urbanists, media-based experts, artists, and architects to discuss how the way we represent, illuminate, and visualize the city, opens new opportunities for remaking the city. This conversation will form the basis of future events, publications, and projects on how different emerging media and techniques (such as gaming, live-mapping, graphic narratives, and digitally-manipulated photography/video) can enable both designers and the public to see the city in different ways — a key step in leveraging change in the way that our cities may be designed, and ultimately work.

OP CITY is being organized with support from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.