Exhibit Review: Peter Kuper’s Insectopolis

  Peter Kuper’s Insectopolis: A Natural History. New York: Society of Illustrators. May 14 - September 20, 2025. https://societyillustrators.org/event/insectopolis/

reviewed by José Alaniz

 

The late naturalist and myrmecologist E. O. Wilson casts a long shadow over the exhibit Peter Kuper’s Insectopolis: A Natural History, and indeed over much of the celebrated cartoonist’s environmentalist-themed recent works, such as the new non-fiction book of the same name (2025) which inspired the exhibit and the graphic novel Ruins (2015). So it makes sense that Wilson would get star billing at the show, via a prominently-placed (and famous) quote: “If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. But if insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.”[i]

That pretty much encapsulates Kuper’s stance towards the insect world: one that exists in parallel with ours, closely overlapping it, while remaining for the most part unseen. Yet (as Wilson’s quote also implies) that parallel world is under threat like never before in the last ten millennia, i.e., since humans started mucking up the planet. Catastrophic biodiversity loss — including of insects — is a feature, not a bug (sorry) of late industrial capitalism. It didn’t have to be this way, but it seems we moderns have forced a choice between economic prosperity and a livable, breathable biosphere. Not the brightest move, as our descendants will likely conclude, and as some today are already screaming to deaf ears.

Anyway, Insectopolis (the show and, for that matter, the book) stands as a rebuke to that sort of thoughtlessness, inviting the visitor to open their eyes to the dazzling, astonishing diversity and profundity of arthropod life on this shining blue orb. “There are estimated 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 insects,” says a helpful label. “That’s 1.25 billion for every person on Earth.”

Kuper has loved bugs for a long time (there’s even a photo of him as a nine-year-old, contemplating a moth), but the exhibit had its origins when the artist was researching his book at the New York Public Library as a 2020-2021 Jean Strouse Cullman Fellow. Pandemic-era restrictions meant he spent a lot of time on his own, exploring the renowned, and now virtually-empty library. The depopulated site suggested to him a post-apocalyptic setting, which he took up for the book’s framing sequence (seemy Kuper interview). Kuper also created an exhibit of the work-in-progress, called “INterSECTS,” in part of the library.[ii]

The second floor gallery of the Society of Illustrators is a rather different space. Cozier. You have to negotiate more corners. It can get crowded fast. But the tight confines work quite well to suggest almost a hive-like structure, like you’re traversing a giant termite colony. (This is probably not the best show for claustrophobes.)

That feeling of compactness begins at the narrow stairs; you have to let someone come down before you can go up. There are colorful monarch butterflies glued to the front of each step, leading you on. Kuper has lined the wall of the staircase with prints from the monarchs’ journey in Ruins, as well as with maps showing their 3,000-mile migration from North America to a pine forest in Mexico. It might make you feel like you yourself are on the precipice of a long journey.

That journey takes you through vast tracts of time as well as space, from the comet cataclysm that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, through all of Homo sapiens history, East and West, North and South, above and below ground, in the skies and in the oceans. Insects are everywhere, and they’ve been around forever (or it might as well be forever: since the Devonian period, over 400 million years ago). That’s a lot to cover.

Kuper breaks that daunting story into sections, some with whimsical names, that focus on particular insects and/or the people who studied them: Cicada’s Brood, Ant Farm, Bee Kind, Entomologists and Naturalists. Among the latter you’ll find both the usual suspects (Rachel Carson, Margaret Collins, Alexander von Humboldt) and for some, the unexpected (Osamu Tezuka!). QR codes link you to the Mexican poet Homero Aridjis reciting his poem “A una Mariposa Monarca,” to evolutionary biologist Jessica Lee Ware discussing dragonflies, to professor of Entomology Barrett Anthony Klein dishing on dung beetles. (Kuper carried over these QR codes from the book.)

There are lots of other amusing touches, such as a reproduced ad for an ant farm, the sort the young Kuper would have sent away for. Throughout the space, monarchs seem to flutter above on the ceiling, all over the walls, even in the men’s room. Some of these prints stand out in relief, casting shadows against the surfaces to which they adhere. Kuper also drew a line of ants directly on the wall. In fact, cartoon insects inhabit much of the real estate not already taken up by Kuper’s framed artwork.  

That artwork, of course, is the real star of the show. It’s always a delight to get up close to comic art, to see what an artist inks and what they leave as pencils, how much they erased, what they corrected on the page vs. what they will fix or alter in digital. It doesn’t hurt at all that Insectopolis features Kuper’s most meticulous, elaborate drawing, from Cretaceous-era foliage to the classical facades of the NYPL. And lots and lots of lovingly-rendered bugs. I was quite charmed (and saddened) by a page from Insectopolis’ cicada section, of said creature burrowing up over four vertical panels, only to discover that, while it was hibernating over the last 17 years, humans had tarmacked its path forward. It got Aida’ed.

I also appreciated a color nightscape of lightning bugs placed in the “Nabokov niche,” with a quote from the famous Russian-American novelist/lepidopterist: “Time is rhythm: the insect rhythm of a warm humid night, brain ripple, breathing, the drum in my temple — these are our faithful timekeepers” (this quote concludes the book version of Insectopolis).^[iii] Not all the art, incidentally, is tied to Insectopolis or Ruins. Kuper throws in his 2009 portrait of the caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland.  

A labor of love from a fully committed artist with a mission to educate, Insectopolis is a small but terrific show. Of course, for all Kuper’s herculean efforts, the exhibit can only begin to hint at the aforementioned dazzling, astonishing diversity and profundity of arthropod life on this shining blue orb. It’s the perfect companion piece, nay, extension to the book; almost like a wonderful pop-up version brought to life.

“I hope this exhibition will open visitors up to a newfound appreciation of these tiny giants that help make our world go around,” Kuper says in his artist statement. To give the visitor a sense of all we are losing as our insect biosphere contracts, as we keep putting development over butterflies, Insectopolis presents us with an artistic ecosystem, modest in scale but vast in meaning.

 

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[i] A simplified version of a passage from Wilson’s The Diversity of Life (1992).

[ii] Peter Kuper’s “INterSECTS” took place January 12–August 13, 2022 in the Rayner Special Collections Wing of the  NYPL’s Stephen A. Schwarzman Building. The famous one, with the lions.

[iii] The quote comes from Nabokov’s 1969 novel Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle. 

Exhibition Review: Beautiful Monsters: The Art of Emil Ferris

 reviewed by Carli Spina

Kim Munson. Beautiful Monsters: The Art of Emil Ferris. New York: Society of Illustrators’ Museum of Illustration. August 3-October 19, 2024. https://societyillustrators.org/event/beautifulmonsters/

To coincide with this year’s publication of Emil Ferris’ My Favorite Thing is Monsters: Book Two, the Society of Illustrators’ Museum of Illustration devoted its main floor and lower level gallery spaces to an exhibition of her work curated by Kim Munson. Munson has ample experience in this arena, having edited the Eisner Award-nominated anthology Comic Art in Museums, curated the museum exhibit Women in Comics, and served as a 2022 Eisner Award judge. Clearly, Munson curated this exhibit with care to ensure that it adds to visitors’ understanding of Ferris and her work. The pieces selected illustrated many aspects of Ferris’ work in My Favorite Thing is Monsters including her character design work, her influences, and the monster magazine covers which feature in both volumes. Pieces from her short work “The Bite That Changed My Life” from Our Favorite Thing Is My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, which was created for Free Comic Book Day in 2019 were also prominently featured in the exhibit.

Where the exhibit exceled most was in placing Ferris’ work in context. This began as visitors entered the first room of the exhibit where the first case and interpretative text focus on Ferris’ father’s work as a toy designer. His work as a designer of iconic toys, including the Rock ‘Em, Sock ‘Em Robots, the light-up game Simon, and the Mickey Mouse push button landline phone, where Mickey holds the receiver, were highlighted as an important source of inspiration for Ferris’ work and particularly her repetition of shapes. The influence of toys carried into the second room of the exhibit where an illustration of Granny Smith: Super Crime Fighter was paired with an actual doll with an apple in place of the head, and a label explaining how Ferris grew up creating her own toys from 10-cent items found in the Salvation Army bin. Understanding how these childhood experiences carried into Ferris’ work adds a deeper layer to her artwork and her text.

The exhibit also contextualized Ferris’ references to several classic paintings of Judith beheading Holofernes by bringing these pieces, and some initial drafts, together while listing the works Ferris references. Though this section of the exhibit would have benefited from including reproductions of the works referenced for comparison, it was nevertheless helpful in making explicit the connection between these classic works and Ferris’ art. In keeping with this connection to classic art, Ferris created a large-scale piece titled Scary Starry Night specifically for this exhibit. It is described on the accompanying label as a “tribute to Van Gogh’s 1889 painting The Starry Night” and the piece consists of a large, rectangular illustration that is very similar to the original painting, drawn in the style of Ferris’ artwork for this book with cross-hatching in ball-point pen. Eyes are featured in place of the stars found in the original work and a red set of eyes has been added to each of the black towers that rise in the left side of the piece in this adaptation. To the left of this work, a cutout figure of Van Gogh holding a palette and brushes was positioned as if he is in the midst of painting the larger work. This illustration continues Ferris’ practice of reworking classic art works and more modern popular illustrations in her own style and inhabited by her own characters. At the same time, it also served as an interactive element of the exhibit, given that the label specifically suggested that visitors take their picture with this piece and post it on social media. Such photo opportunities are becoming more common in museums, but this one contributed to the exhibit by serving both as a focal point for the eye upon entering the larger of the two rooms of the exhibit and as an original work specifically created for the exhibit.

While the majority of the works in the exhibit were illustrations from My Favorite Thing is Monsters, the exhibit would still have benefited from more detailed labels in places, particularly for those works that are not illustrations from one of the books. A good example of this was one of the few three-dimensional objects in the exhibit, a mask that appears to be a recreation of one found in an illustration. A recent interview with the author seems to confirm that this mask was created by Ferris’ mother when she was a child,^[1] which an adjacent comic in the exhibit described. However, a label with more details about this would have been appreciated, especially given that greater context is given for her father’s creative career and his influence on Ferris. Given that her mother was also a professional artist,^[2] this felt like a missed opportunity to offer a comparative look at her mother’s influence in her work.

This exhibit offered a chance to experience Ferris’ work, often in a new context that added to visitors’ understanding of her novels but could be appreciated by both fans of her work and those who have not yet read it.

 

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^[1] Vitali, Marc. 2024. “Eagerly Awaited Graphic Novel Embraces Chicago, Art and Monsters — Both Real and Imaginary.” WTTW. June 4. https://news.wttw.com/2024/06/04/eagerly-awaited-graphic-novel-embraces-chicago-art-and-monsters-both-real-and-imaginary

^[2] Yood, James. 1991. “Eleanor Spiess-Ferris: Zaks Gallery.” Artforum International. Sept. 1: Reviews 139.

Exhibit Review: Batman exhibits at the Society of Illustrators in New York City

Illustrating Batman: Eighty Years of Comics and Pop Culture, Batman Collected: Chip Kidd’s Batman Obsession, and Bat-Manga!: The Secret History of Batman in Japan. Rob Pistella and John Lind. New York: Society of Illustrators’ Museum of Illustration. June 12-October 12, 2019.  < https://www.societyillustrators.org/exhibits/illustrating-batman>,  <https://www.societyillustrators.org/exhibits/batman-collected-chip-kidd%E2%80%99s-batman-obsession>, <https://www.societyillustrators.org/exhibits/bat-manga-secret-history-batman-japan>

(all photographs are courtesy of the Society’s Flickr page at <https://www.flickr.com/photos/societyillustrators/albums/72157709277832053>

In honor of the 80th anniversary of the creation of Batman, the Society of Illustrators is currently hosting four exhibits about his comics history, with the three major ones co-curated by Rob Pistella and John Lind.

As the opening panel of the exhibit group points out, the eightieth anniversary of Batman’s creation happens to coincide with the eightieth anniversary of the Society of Illustrators moving into its current location on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, making the venue an even more relevant location for these exhibits. Needless to say, after so many years, Batman and his many allies and adversaries have gone through many transformations. Though not all of them are represented in these exhibits, there are a diverse assortment of Batman items on display from a number of collectors’ collections, ranging from comic strips, to examples of Batman-themed toys. At the heart of all of the exhibits, however, is a focus on the illustrations that have brought the world of Batman to life over the last eighty years, which means that visitors will see an assortment of interpretations of Batman and his world. In fact, works by more than four dozen artists are featured throughout the exhibits which helps to offer a crash course in the history of the character around the world.  

The largest of these exhibits is Illustrating Batman: Eighty Years of Comics and Pop Culture, which extends across two galleries and floors in the museum. The primary focus of this exhibit is original art from the comics with a particular focus on cover art, but this is far from all that is on display. There are a few cases showing examples of Batman products from comic books to Nabisco Shredded Wheat packages with Batman and Robin on them. Illustrated works dominate in the exhibit, although the 1960’s live action Batman television show is playing in the museum’s theater space to offer context for Batman’s visual style during this period. Though not the centerpiece of the exhibit, these products and the video installation show the widespread cultural impact that Batman and his friends (and enemies) have had in the decades since his creation.

The comic art that is on display spans much of Batman’s history, with several items devoted to his creation. The exhibit does a very nice job of explaining the character’s origin, including the reason that Bob Kane initially received sole credit for the character, Bill Finger’s contributions, and the important work of other artists during the early years of the character’s development. It includes not only finished artwork, but also some evidence of the artistic process, such as two sketchbooks kept by Lew Sayre Schwartz during his time working on Batman comics in the late 1940’s to 1950’s. Some examples of newspaper comic strips are also included in the exhibit to represent the early years. This exhibit offers background on all of the important periods in Batman’s history and an assortment of examples of art from each as well. As such, it is a good introduction to the development of this important character, though it may not offer much that is new for those with serious Batman knowledge. 

Bat-Manga!: The Secret History of Batman in Japan is focused on Jiro Kuwata’s artwork for a manga version of Batman, which was published in Japan beginning in 1966. Created at a point when Batman was extremely popular in Japan, the manga was not long-lived, but does offer a glimpse into a Japanese interpretation of the character. The original art from the manga shows how Kuwata developed his own style for both Batman and Robin and brought them into a manga universe. While this is a fairly small exhibit, the interpretive text notes that it includes many pieces of original art that have not previously appeared in the U.S. The pieces displayed feature full pages from the comic, allowing viewers to get a sense of the way the story moves from panel to panel and also offers ample opportunities to see how this manga combines traditional Batman elements with Japanese stylistic elements from the time. It is a great introduction to a piece of Batman’s history that many fans may not know much about. However, the gallery in which the works are displayed is the smallest of all of the exhibits, making the experience of viewing the works feel a bit cramped.

Working with book designer and author Chip Kidd, the museum has also curated an exhibit entitled Batman Collected: Chip Kidd’s Batman Obsession, which showcases items from his personal collection of Batman art. This is the exhibit that is likely to have the most surprises for even serious Batman experts because it includes several works that Kidd has personally commissioned and pieces that have been personalized for him by Batman artists that he knows. He has art by artists of well-known Batman works, such as Frank Miller, Dave Taylor, and Alex Ross, as well as some by less expected artists such as alternative cartoonists Chris Ware and Daniel Clowes. His interesting collection is a mix of examples of Batman in products, including a 1966 ad for All Star Dairies’ Dairy Chocolate featuring Batman, a Batman board game from Japan, at least one rejected cover illustration, and sequences of original art for multiple pages of a single issue.

In addition to these three exhibits, the museum also has a display entitled Batman: Black and White <https://www.societyillustrators.org/exhibits/batman-black-and-white>, which showcases several examples of original cover art that Chip Kidd commissioned artists to draw on blank covers of the Batman: Black and White comic. Though Kidd owns over 100 of these works in total, only a selection are on display on the second floor landing, but they offer an opportunity to see Batman as interpreted by a wide range of artists in a diverse set of styles, including examples by Roz Chast, Peter de Sève, Jaime Herandez, Liniers, and Anders Nielsen to name just a selection. These offer a fun look at Batman through the lens of very different art styles, making it a highlight of the exhibit series. 

One thing that this trio of exhibitions does very well is showing Batman in many different styles and at virtually every point in his history. The exhibits also showcase a range of pieces that are held by private collectors and therefore rarely seen in some cases. Taken together, the exhibits will offer something new for all but the most knowledgeable of Batman followers, making them worth a visit for any fan or scholar. The three exhibits will be on display until October 12, 2019 at the Society of Illustrators’ Museum of Illustration.

Carli Spina

(This review was written for the International Journal of Comic Art 21:1, but this version appeared on the IJOCA blog on July 2, 2019, while the exhibit is still open for viewing.)