Portrait by John Cuneo
Hanging the annual show used to be easy. You needed a sack of nails and somebody tall. Things got a little more complicated this year when we added “Moving Image” to the competition categories. Animation has been a film staple in the U.S. for nearly a century, but it has become a major outlet for illustration. As we are all aware, delivery systems for visual materials have moved beyond the static printed page and can now be broadcast and stored on personal devices.
To showcase this category of work, we created a screening room at the Society. Named for an illustrator who was also one of America’s early animation pioneers, The Winsor McCay Screening Room was dedicated in 2012, when we showed McCay’s The Flying House, a 1921 animated film that was recently remastered by Bill Plympton Studios in partnership with the Society.
The annual show still boasts the finest cross section of the year’s best printed illustration work, so we offer this book as its permanent showcase and invite you to visit us year round to see what’s moving in the screening room.
My thanks to this year’s chair, Yuko Shimizu, to assistant chair, John Hendrix, and to the jurors for the careful choices they made and for their time well spent.
Thanks go to our Executive Director Anelle Miller, Exhibitions Director Kate Feirtag, and the entire Society staff for their enormous efforts in making every aspect of this competition and exhibition—including the awards ceremonies—outstanding.
Every January through March, hundreds of fine originals and prints are hung on the walls, so please visit the Society to see the annual shows if you can, and if you are over 6’2", bring a hammer.