Art Spiegelman – Disaster Is My Muse

While best-known for the two volumes of Maus (voted by the New York Public Library as one of the 125 most important books of the last 125 years), Art Spiegelman’s deeply personal body of work also includes In the Shadow of No Towers, Breakdowns, and The Wild Party and he is known for his many provocative covers for The New Yorker magazine where he was a staff artist and writer from 1993-2003. With his wife, Françoise Mouly, Spiegelman published and edited the acclaimed and influential comics magazine RAW from 1980-1991, where Maus was first serialized. 

When Maus was banned by a Tennessee school board in 2022, Art, a self-avowed “first amendment fundamentalist,” stepped back into the spotlight as an ardent defender of free speech and against book-banning in both national media appearances and community engagements all over the country. As one of our country’s leading public intellectuals he has used his platform well and continues to do so. 

Disaster is My Muse! is a portrait of an artist fully engaged with his past and his present who, with his chosen medium of comics, helps us to understand our turbulent world, and is testimony to the power of art to make sense of our personal and collective histories.