About this project

The Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art - MoCCA - is proud to present Is This the Al Jaffee Art Exhibit?, an exhibition that spans the many decades of the career of the inimitable AL JAFFEE, famous for his long creative association with MAD magazine. The exhibition will showcase a selection of Al's amazing, all-new illustrations from the just-released biography, Al Jaffee's Mad Life (written by Mary-Lou Weisman). The drawings chronicle his childhood in a Lithuanian shtetl and his traumatic loss of his mother in the Holocaust. The exhibition will also feature original art from his Mad Fold-Ins, and other classic work from his career at Mad magazine and elsewhere. The exhibition is scheduled for Fall 2010, please check our website for details.

The exhibition will be curated by Danny Fingeroth and Arie Kaplan. Your donation will be used to cover the expenses of the exhibition, including shipping, matting, and framing of the artwork, promotion, and special events with Al Jaffee! Born in 1921, AL JAFFEE was a member of the first graduating class of New York's High School of Music and Art (where his classmates included future Mad colleagues HARVEY KURTZMAN, AL FELDSTEIN, and JOHN SEVERIN). Jaffee worked as an editor, writer and artist for STAN LEE at Timely (later Marvel) Comics during the 1940s. Then, in 1955, Jaffee joined “the Usual Gang of Idiots” at Mad where he's been a mainstay ever since, entertaining generations with his Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions and Mad Fold-Ins. Despite repeated requests, Jaffee refuses to retire, and is frighteningly active, including still doing the Fold-Ins for Mad.

For more information about the irrepressible Al Jaffee please read this article in the NewYork Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/30/arts/design/30genz.html