Hi there. I’m the Curator-at-Large for the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, and a co-curator for a large-scale rethinking of the art history of the 1960s at the Whitney Museum of American Art (March 2025). My biography of Robert Crumb will be published on April 14 by Scribner. Pre-order it here. I also write for various magazines and 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: 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) and Spain Rodrigiuez (Hard-Ass Friday Nite, New York).
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@icloud.com