{"id":791405,"date":"2026-05-12T16:03:19","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T16:03:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/791405\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T16:03:19","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T16:03:19","slug":"wisconsin-art-museum-names-the-states-first-cartoonist-laureate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/791405\/","title":{"rendered":"Wisconsin art museum names the state’s first cartoonist laureate"},"content":{"rendered":"

Milwaukee\u2019s Paul Noth doesn\u2019t remember a time when he wasn\u2019t drawing and reading cartoons. And since the beginning, his own work has had a common thread: average characters, absurd situations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Over the course of his career, Noth has published over 400 cartoons in The New Yorker. He was the 2025 winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor in Cartoon Art. His first published collection<\/a> of cartoons comes out in the fall.<\/p>\n

And now, The Museum of Wisconsin Art in West Bend is honoring him as its cartoonist laureate for Wisconsin.<\/p>\n

Understanding Wisconsin, Together.<\/p>\n

WPR\u2019s \u201cWisconsin Today\u201d newsletter keeps you connected to the state you love without feeling overwhelmed. No paywall. No agenda. No corporate filter.<\/p>\n

Noth is the very first to take on the role. He\u2019ll act as an ambassador for the art form around the state and highlight Wisconsin\u2019s important role<\/a> in the history of American comics.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"AThis 2010 cartoon was the inspiration for the title of Noth\u2019s forthcoming collection, \u201cI Am Going to Eat You\u2026 and Other Awkward Truths: A Cartoonist\u2019s Romp Through the Lunacy of Our Times.\u201d Illustration courtesy of Paul Noth<\/p>\n

Noth joined WPR\u2019s \u201cWisconsin Today<\/a>\u201d for a look at his career and what he hopes to achieve in his three years as cartoonist laureate.<\/p>\n

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.<\/p>\n

Kate Archer Kent: Where did your love of cartoons come from?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Paul Noth:<\/strong> It\u2019s hard to say. Before I could even remember, they were just part of my consciousness, from the time I was a little kid. I was always drawing them, too.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Growing up in Milwaukee, there was a great comics section in the Milwaukee Journal. It was called the Green Sheet<\/a>. It was literally printed on green paper. That was my favorite part of the newspaper and my favorite part of the day. My father worked there \u2014 he was the movie critic and the feature editor at the (Milwaukee) Journal, so he would bring home cartoon books that came across the feature desk for me, too.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I never really expected to do it for a living, even though I loved it so much. (My father) kind of warned me, \u201cThis industry is in trouble. You don\u2019t want to go into the newspaper business.\u201d And so I didn\u2019t think print journalism would ever be a thing for me. But that just happened to be the way that it worked out.<\/p>\n

\"TwoA 2014 comic by Paul Noth. Illustration courtesy of Paul Noth<\/p>\n

KAK:<\/strong> How did you begin cartooning for The New Yorker, and how has it influenced your work?<\/strong><\/p>\n

PN: <\/strong>I grew up with such a knowledge of it and its history, and I knew it was the hardest place to ever possibly get into. So I never even tried until I met a New Yorker cartoonist. I was living in New York, and I brought some of my other writing to a monthly show called The Rejection Show because I hadn\u2019t been able to sell any of my writing at all. This was a live show where people would bring in their best rejected material, and that\u2019s where I met a cartoonist named Matt Diffee, who\u2019s a great New Yorker cartoonist and children\u2019s author. And I showed him some of my work, and he really encouraged me to submit.<\/p>\n

When you do that, they strongly recommend you do 10 cartoons a week, and it\u2019s a very good week if you sell one. So it\u2019s a lot of rejection, but the discipline of doing that in the single panel format, I really took to it right away. It helped me focus it, it limited my options. And for me, that is a great way to work.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"TwoA 2010 comic by Paul Noth. Illustration courtesy of Paul Noth<\/p>\n

KAK: As part of your role as cartoonist laureate, you\u2019ll be teaching cartooning workshops for kids this summer. What kind of advice do you give to young cartoonists?<\/strong><\/p>\n

PN: <\/strong>I do this project with them that I call the \u201cbad idea notebook\u201d project. And that\u2019s based on the way I work. We have a notebook that just says \u201cbad ideas\u201d on the front, and that frees you up. You\u2019re not trying to be good, you\u2019re just trying to write down and draw as many bad ideas as you can, which is literally the actual way I work. I just keep my pen or pencil going and write down thoughts and doodle pictures, and I don\u2019t worry about whether they\u2019re any good or not. Somehow, through doing that, you plant enough seeds that something grows that you actually like.<\/p>\n

Go for volume. And most of all, be free and get over the inner censor. Stop shutting yourself down before you\u2019ve had the idea.<\/p>\n

KAK: Where do you find inspiration for your work?<\/strong><\/p>\n

PN: <\/strong>It can come from anywhere. It can come from conversation or a book I\u2019m reading. In the morning, I like to get up and just write down a couple of ideas. Not because they\u2019re good ideas, but just to remind myself what I do and to turn my cartoon brain on. And then the antenna will be up and I will pick up on things in conversations, or little visual ideas will come to me, and I\u2019ll be like, \u201cMaybe that\u2019s something that\u2019s worth writing down.\u201d The thing about humor is that it\u2019s surprising when it works. So I have to sort of be open to it from anywhere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Milwaukee\u2019s Paul Noth doesn\u2019t remember a time when he wasn\u2019t drawing and reading cartoons. And since the beginning,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":791406,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[1037,648,1032,392,1033,171,50,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-791405","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-art","9":"tag-arts","10":"tag-arts-and-design","11":"tag-culture","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116562455635306436","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=791405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791405\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/791406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=791405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=791405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=791405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}