Underground exhibitions mixed avant-garde comics with Mad magazine artists in storefronts

Evidence

During the summer, Deitch curated a weeklong show in an East Ninth Street storefront. Tripping on acid acquired by his boss as part of a business deal with Timothy Leary, he changed the exhibit daily, combining work by his underground colleagues with that of Mad magazine artists Wallace Wood and Jack Davis, and even Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo in Slumberland. Deitch also dispensed free beer and copies of Gothic Blimp Works; the exhibition, which he considered a museum and “infinitely superior” to the one Ed Sanders had organized in November 1968 at the Peace Eye bookstore, was a farewell. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 1475