Robert Crumb in Conversation

Dan Nadel is an author and curator. In additon to Crumb: A Cartoonist's Life his books include, It’s Life as a I See It: Black Cartoonists in Chicago, 1940–1980; Peter Saul: Professional Artist Correspondence, 1945–1976; and Art Out of Time: Unknown Comic Visionaries, 1900–1969. Nadel has curated exhibitions for galleries and museums internationally including the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at the University of California Davis, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. He is the founder of PictureBox, a publishing and packaging company that produced over 100 books, objects, and zines from 2000 to 2014, including the Grammy Award–winning design for Wilco’s 2004 album A Ghost Is Born. Dan is the curator-at-large for the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his family.

Sampada Aranke is an associate professor of art history and comparative studies at Ohio State. Her research interests include performance theories of embodiment, visual culture, and Black cultural and aesthetic theory. Her work has been published in e-flux, Artforum, Art Journal, ASAP/J, and October. She has written catalogue essays for Sadie Barnette, Betye Saar, Rashid Johnson, Faith Ringgold, Kambui Olujimi, Sable Elyse Smith, and Zachary Fabri. She is the recipient of the 2021 Art Journal award for her article "Blackouts and Other Visual Escapes." She has curated and cocurated exhibitions at galleries and museums, including the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at the University of California Davis and the Driskell Center at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her book Death's Futurity: The Visual Life of Black Power (Duke University Press, 2023) examines the ways artists and activists reconceptualized death as a generative visual and political force in the Black Power era.