Traveling
Exhibitions
Reading Between the Lines:
Charles Brooks
and the American Presidential Campaign Highlighting the work of
long-time Birmingham News political cartoonist Charles
Brooks, Reading Between the Lines: Charles Brooks and
the American Presidential Campaign features cartoons on
presidential campaigns from Kennedy to Reagan.
Cartoons have provided a
popular and highly effective form of political
commentary since the time of Napoleon and George III.
Artists of political cartoons use caricature to
visually emphasize some aspect of a politician’s
character, as when cartoonists drew Teddy Roosevelt as
a cowboy to illustrate his swashbuckling persona or
George W. Bush as a small child to suggest political
inexperience. Cartoonists also create memorable images
by exaggerating a politician’s prominent feature,
like Abraham Lincoln’s long legs, Richard
Nixon’s five o’clock shadow, or Bill
Clinton’s bulbous nose.
Alabama’s
best-known political cartoonist of the twentieth
century was the Birmingham News’ Charles Brooks.
The recipient of numerous awards for political
cartooning, Brooks’ work is featured in more than
50 books, including encyclopedias and textbooks on
history, political science and economics. Over the
course of his career Charles Brooks provided commentary
on ten presidential elections and eight presidential
administrations (from Truman to Reagan), the Cold War,
the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, and
Watergate, as well as state and local politics. On the
presidency and national politics, Brooks’ work is
un-apologetically conservative, but he chronicles the
foibles of political figures from the right and left.
To see more images from the exhibition, click here.
About the
Exhibition
Curators
Jim Baggett and Regina
Ammon
Format
45 17 x 21 frames
(including title panel), 6 8 x 14 text panels. This
exhibition can be reduced to fewer frames or
panels without harming its integrity.
History
Exhibition Birmingham
Public Library, March-April 2004
