Barbara Shermund, Observer of Us

My favorite New Yorker cartoonist

My favorite cartoonist from the early days of The New Yorker was Barbara Shermund. When she died in 1978, a real obit was not written for her at the time because the NY Times was on strike that year (assuming they would have done an obit for her, but we don’t know). But now, the NY Times has been doing obituaroes of women who were overlooked in the past, and they have written an obit in the Times for Barbara! I am so happy. I am proud to say that I made it happen, as I met the head of the Overlooked project, Amy Padnani, at an event and strongly suggested they write about Shermund. Here it is.

And here is a small slection of her wonderful work. Shermund, who began with The New Yorker in its first year, 1925, was extremely prolific, drawing over 600 cartoons for the magazine in the early years. Her voice was unique in its feminist bent; Shermund seemed to be showing us what it was like to be a woman in those years, a time for women that included feelings of freedom, yet still experincing barriers, sterotypes and cultural stricures. Shermund’s cartoons pushed the boundaries of and exposed convential gender expectations.

Here is a piece that I wrote about Shermund for The New Yorker a few years ago. It’s time we acknowlege that women have always been funny, as well as amazing observers of our culture, like…