Video: New Yorker Cartoonist Roz Chast Creates Mural Live at Museum of the City of New York

The exhibitions at the Museum of the City of New York seem to just be getting better and better, and Roz Chast: Cartoon Memoirs is an engaging, fun exhibit inspiring for both adults and kids. Even if you don’t know Roz Chast by name, you’re likely familiar with her prolific illustration work for The New Yorker – after all the Brooklyn-born artist has been producing cartoons for the magazine since 1978. The new exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York has a wondrously New York City bent with sections in the exhibit entitled “When You Live In New York” and “You Are Now Leaving New York,” among others.

At the end of March, we were lucky to have witnessed Chast producing the piece “Subway Sofa” live at the museum in preparation for the exhibit opening and we’re excited to share the above timelapse video of the process.

Photo by Filip Wolak courtesy Museum of the City of New York

The exhibit includes 200 works by Chast, including some never published before. As you’ll find described in the exhibit, Chast “observes the world through a distinctly New York lens. She depicts the city’s residents up close in their urban habitats…We also encounter the characters navigating the city’s street life, which Chast mines for its inexhaustible supply of human idiosyncrasies. Her sidewalks are lined with peculiar restaurants and stores and peopled by highly eccentric, though oddly familiar, New York characters.”

On May 6th, you can also catch Roz Chast in person at the special event, “An Evening with Roz Chast” at the Museum of the City of New York. Chast will share some of the formative influences and personal stories that have shaped her career – and her view of life as a native New Yorker. She’ll also discuss her 2014 best-selling graphic memoir, Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?.

Check out the exhibit today at the Museum of the City of New York. Admission is $14 for adults, $10 for seniors and students. Children and teens are free.

Other exhibits currently at the museum: New York’s Yiddish Theater, street artist Chris “Daze” Ellis’s solo show “The City is My Muse,” Picturing Prestige: New York Portraits, Gilded New York, Activist New York and more.