The Dan Chaney DC Comics Exhibit
The Dan Chaney DC Comics Exhibit was created to honor the life of former Oklahoma State University librarian Dan Chaney. Dan was a life-long collector of comics, especially publications of DC Comics. He had collected thousands of volumes over the years, with complete collections certain properties and characters. Upon his unfortunate and untimely passing, his entire collection was purchased by the OSU Library to enter the University Archives.
In honor of Dan, an exhibit featuring just a small sample of his massive collection was created. I along with an exhibit committee decided on the structure of featuring four characters plus a tribute section for Dan, and from there I was responsible for planning, designing, and constructing the exhibit, with about half of the writing and research being done by myself and the other half done by colleagues Bonnie Cain-Wood and Jacob Jackson.
The exhibit gives a brief exploration of each character’s history, development, and cultural relevance. To develop the aesthetic of the exhibit, I created a number of paint splatters that could be adjusted and manipulated to fit the needs of the layout. I illustrated each of the character’s faces, along with a comic book styled caricature of Dan, for background and promotional use.
The digital component, a quiz with questions based on information found in the exhibit, was created by OSU Library multimedia producer Nina Thornton. This quiz used assets created for the physical displays as well as two more illustrations I’d drawn for the “correct” and “incorrect” answer screens. The exhibit was completed in August 2019 and was on display until August 2020.
Interactive quiz created by Nina Thornton.