Hi there. I’m the author of Crumb: A Cartoonist’s Life (Scribner, 2025), and the Steven and Ann Ames Curator of Drawings and Prints at the Whitney Museum of American Art. I also write for various publications including Blau, Artforum, and The New York Review of Books.
Back in the olden days I founded and ran PictureBox, which produced over one hundred books, objects, and zines from 2000 to 2014, including the Grammy Award-winning design for Wilco’s 2004 album A Ghost is Born. I also co-founded the magazine Comics Comics (2005-2011), and am a former editor of The Comics Journal (2011-2017).
My books include: Robert Crumb: Existential Comics, It’s Life As a I See It: Black Cartoonists in Chicago, 1940-1980, Peter Saul: Professional Artist Correspondence, 1945-1976, Return to Romance: The Strange Love Stories of Ogden Whitney (with Frank Santoro), The Collected Hairy Who Publications, Art Out of Time: Unknown Comic Visionaries, 1900-1969, Gary Panter, Art in Time: Unknown Comic Book Adventures, 1940-1980, and co-authored (with Norman Hathaway) Electrical Banana: Masters of Psychedelic Art, and Dorothy and Otis: Designing the American Dream.
As the former Curator at Large for the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, University of California, Davis (2019-2022), I curated monographic exhibitions on artists including Mike Henderson, Kathy Butterly, William T. Wiley, and Mary Heilmann. Other curatorial projects include: What Nerve! Alternative Figures in American Art: 1960 to the Present in Providence and New York, Return of the Repressed: Destroy All Monsters 1973-1977 (co-curated with Mike Kelley) in Los Angeles, Gertrude Abercrombie, New York; Red Grooms, Handiwork 1955-2018, New York; Alan Turner: Paintings 1979-2009, Los Angeles; Samaritans, New York; Karl Wirsum: Drawings 1967-1970 in New York; Suellen Rocca: Bare Shouldered Beauty in New York; Macronauts for the Athens 2007 Biennale in Greece; Jeremy Anderson: “Taking the World Apart is Easy, It is Getting it Back Together in an Acceptable Form That is Difficult in Los Angeles; The Passing of Time: Michael Hurson at Work, 1971-2001 in New York; Evelyn Statsinger: Currents, New York. Chicago Comics, 1960s to Now for the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; The House That Jack Built, Lucerne, Switzerland; Victor Moscoso: Psychedelic Drawings, 1967-1982 in New York (with Norman Hathaway); Spain Rodrigiuez Hard-Ass Friday Nite, New York; and Roberto Matta All Things Are Changing in All Dimensions, Los Angeles (with Cornelius Tittel); and Elderly Cartoonists Show Their Work: Robert Armstrong & Robert Crumb, San Francisco.
I was a 2021-2022 fellow at the Leon Levy Center for Biography, at the Graduate Center, CUNY and a Dora Maar House Fellow in 2023.
A couple of good interviews: Art21 and Tablet. I live in Brooklyn with my family.
Contact: dannadel@mac.com