I Have A Dream...

I have long-harboured a dream that there should be a permanent place for a comic museum, perhaps not unlike the National Cartoon Gallery in Coffs Harbour (link here) and the Australian Cartoon Museum in Melbourne (opening up again in Docklands soon). The earlier incarnation of the Australian Cartoonists' Association once held a building in Sydney (many, many years ago). But there has never been a comic-specific one. I have mentioned this on Facebook previously, so apologies to anyone who has heard this all before and feels I am repeating myself!

I imagine such a gallery not only housing and displaying original comic pages (hopefully with an Australian emphasis), but also containing a comic book retail outlet (to raise funds for the on-going upkeep and publicity of such a structure), an extensive library (to allow for comic researchers to study comics of the past), and an opportunity to have some practitioners of the craft to be able to live-in for a period of time (like an artistic residency).

Some of these are already being carried out overseas these day, such as the Canadian Comics Open Library (see link here) and creators of graphic novels in France (link here, if you can read French). There's also an increasing acceptance (at last!) of comics as an artistic medium in some circles of literature, with even countries like Britain and the US now starting to record and reproduce some of their comics from years gone by. Here are just two examples, in links here and here.  

Carlene came across a piece of Real Estate recently that seems to be an ideal place to consider bringing this dream to a reality. Suffice to say, I am making some preliminary enquiries. Or is it all simply a fruitless dream....?