PAFF! International Museum of Comic Art

Details: East Africa; 20 February 2023; 710

The Artistic Director has appointed curator Luca Raffaelli (comic expert and historian) to manage the permanent collection. This utilises a multimedia, interactive experience, enabling visitors to admire roughly 200 original pages by the most famous comic artists of all time, as well as over 500 sketches, scripts, historic and rare publications, costumes used in films based on comics, set designs and video content from all around the world, collected through purchases, loans and donations.

Located within the 2200 square metres of exhibition spaces at PAFF!, the collection is distributed across one floor of the museum. It is divided into nine different sections and includes original pages by numerous masters and outstanding artists such as Carl Barks, Milton Caniff, Giorgio Cavazzano, Will Eisner, Floyd Gottfredson, Chester Gould, Benito Jacovitti, Magnus, Milo Manara, George McManus, Andrea Pazienza, Hugo Pratt, Alex Raymond, Charles M. Schulz and Art Spiegelman. A sculpture by Ivan Tranquilli will also be on display, while Davide Toffolo has created a board for the museum introducing “proto-comics”, illustrated stories (for example those decorating Trajan’s Column or drawings in nineteenth-century publications), which came before the birth and success of the comics industry.

Luca Raffaelli has provided an original approach to the structure of the museum visit, rooted in the different formats in which comic art, over more than 100 years of history, has been read, experienced and loved all around the globe, based on the cultures, economic conditions and social habits of readers. Thus we encounter first the birth of the Sunday pages in colour supplements of American newspapers, and later strips and comic books. Meanwhile, in Italy we find the newspaper format (like that used for Corriere dei Piccoli) and the strips of Tex, which then led to the success of the eponymous format; and in France volumes called albùm, and Japan Tankōbon, small books used to publish popular manga.

PAFF! is therefore the only museum in the world dedicated to comics with a primary focus on comparing original pages with reproductions, newspapers, albums and books in which comics live.

This emphasises the surprising formats adopted for the publication of some works, and demonstrates interaction between comics and other disciplines (cinema, painting, fashion, design, the avant-garde, theatre and literature) and fields (education and entertainment). It also clarifies better than ever before the relationship between comics and the communications industry, enabling audiences of different cultures, ages and origins to explore new themes and languages.

The majority of comics are created for a specific publishing context, which dictates the space and time available to tell a story. But events and success can change everything. A good example of this is the Sunday comic Flash Gordon, in a large and eye-catching colour version, then reduced to a black-and-white pocket format. Another is L’eternauta, a science-fiction comic first created in horizontal “Argentine format” in the fifties (renowned for having foretold the tragedy of Los Desaparecidos), which became a success in Italy in the vertical Lanciostory format twenty years later. And then there is Maus by Spiegelman, which began life as a supplement in an underground magazine and a distribution of just a few thousand copies, before becoming one of the most famous graphic novels globally, winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1992.

The permanent collection presents original pages in all the different stages of the publishing process, clarifying better than ever before the relationship between comics and the communications industry, thus opening up a new perspective on this art form for audiences of different cultures, ages and origins, also in terms of the relationship with other artistic disciplines and their languages. The multimedia component of the Museum is also particularly rich and skilfully curated, including 56 touch screens, Wi-Fi connection with a dedicated server for interactive monitors, neckbands and latest-generation tablets offering visitors a truly unique interactive experience of comic art.

By the end of 2023, the International Museum of Comic Art will also boast an archive with climate-controlled storage for original pages, drawings and publications in the Museum’s collection. The archive will be equipped with a precision high-energy-efficiency system to keep the environment at a constant temperature of 18°C, with no greater than 45% relative humidity.

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Giulio De Vita - Luca Raffaelli - Ivo Milazzo

“The exhibition and museum as conceived by Giulio De Vita and Paff! is unique and innovative, presenting comics as a complete format for communication, yet one capable of interacting with the other arts. There will be plenty of original works and, as demonstrated by the list of prestigious authors, these are of the highest level. But visitors will be able to admire them after first viewing their reproductions.”

Luca Raffaelli, curator of the PAFF! permanent collection International Museum of Comic Art