Library of Congress to Open Herblock Exhibit

By: E&P Staff Legendary political cartoonist Herblock will be the subject of a new exhibit at the Library of Congress. The exhibit opens Oct. 13, which would have been Herblock's 100th birthday.

The exhibit will feature 82 of Herblock's original drawings from the Library of Congress' Herb Block Collection, which span the cartoonist's 72-year career.

The exhibition will "illuminate Block the man, as well as his mastery of the art of the political cartoon," according to a statement announcing the exhibition from the Library of Congress.

Herb Block's first cartoon appeared in the Chicago Daily News in April 1929. In 1946, he joined the Washington Post, where he remained for the rest of his career. His last cartoon was published in August 2001, six weeks before his death.

Block won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning in 1942, 1954, and 1979. Some of his most famous targets included Senator Joseph McCarthy and President Richard M. Nixon, the latter of whom famously canceled his subscription to the Washington Post (while serving as vice president to Dwight Eisenhower) after seeing an Herblock cartoon depicting Nixon crawling out of a sewer.