By Dana Prifti, Media Relations Writing Intern

The UNH Museum, located on the first floor of the Dimond Library, looks like a page out of a comic book in its latest exhibit. “Campus Comics: Cartooning at UNH” looks back at over 100 years of illustration and cartooning on the UNH campus. Dale Valena, the museum curator, spent months researching the exhibit, flipping through every issue of the student newspaper, The New Hampshire, in the archives in her search for comics to include in the exhibit, which features work by approximately 50 artists.

The comics cover topics ranging from students’ views on professors, homework, campus life, laundry, and dining halls to social and political commentary to reflect the time period. “You can’t beat that Congreve System,” a cartoon drawn by Robert Ganley in 1948, was the first to be drawn in the familiar comic style, with sequential panels to tell a story.

Among the illustrations are three cartoon maps of the UNH campus. Valena is in the early stages of planning a joint project with the staff at The New Hampshire to have a contest in which students would draw a new cartoon-style map of campus.

Valena spent years thinking about this exhibit and months researching and putting it together. “Over the years, I’ve seen all these images and I just thought it would be of great interest to the students,” she said. “I knew it would reflect campus life but it turned out to be sort of a microcosm of what was going on in the world as well.”

“Campus Comics: Cartooning at UNH” will be in the UNH Museum until July 28. The hours are Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday 1 to 5 p.m. For more information go to http://www.izaak.unh.edu/Museum/ or contact Dale Valena, museum curator, at (603) 862- 1081 or dvalena@cisunix.unh.edu