A Few First Steps Into "Drawn From The New Yorker: A Centennial Celebration"

The exhibition "Drawn From The New Yorker:  A Centennial Celebration" fills two floors of the Society of Illustrators, so there are two very good places to begin. To take in the show's material chronologically, a visitor can start at the bar on the third floor. As usual, a festive painting donated by Norman Rockwell welcomes all, as do a variety of libations.

A scrapbook kept by the magazine of published cartoons by Helen E. Hokinson is displayed under glass, on loan from The New Yorker's library. The page is open to her work from December 1926. Below that is the magazine's first cartoon issue from 1997 and the first album of drawings (1928). On the lowest level there are several smaller pony editions of the magazine published for America's overseas troops during World War II.

New Yorker cartoonist Liza Donnelly curated the show. She and her husband, New Yorker cartoonist Michael Maslin, loaned the exhibition a 1940s-era portrait of founding editor Harold Ross by magazine artist Garrett Price.

A photograph by Arnold Newman shows Ross and his wife Jane Grant who, along with Raoul Fleischmann, founded The New Yorker. (Fleischmann provided financing through his family's yeast and baking enterprises.)

A bold 1926 magazine header designed by Johan Bull for the Skyline section is also on loan from the collection of Maslin and Donnelly. They have not been able to determine if it was published.

Note:  These few photographs hardly begin to cover the delights of this exhibition. "Drawn From The New Yorker: A Centennial Celebration" is now on view at the Society of Illustrators. The full show may be seen in all its glory through March 12. The second floor gallery currently featuring more recent material will remain open through May 3.

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