A New Yorker Cartoonist Walks into a Museum

Bob Eckstein on his new book, museums, and how publishing has changed over the years

You may know Bob Eckstein from his New Yorker cartoons, New York Times bestselling book, or excellent Substack

The Bob

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Bob’s newest book is Footnotes from the Most Fascinating Museums: Stories and Memorable Moments from People Who Love Museums, which profiles 75 North American museums and includes 155 of his illustrations.

The book covers a variety of museums from the well-known (Chicago’s Field Museum) to the niche (New York’s National Comedy Center, which I have now added to my museum bucket list). It intersperses illustrations of the museums with fun facts and stories (like one about a visitor who tried to enter LA’s the Broad Museum with a duck in his pants). Reading the book offered me a good mix of museum-visit nostalgia and bucket-list options for future travels.

I got a chance to meet Bob in person at this year’s Erma Bombeck writing conference and today I’m bringing you a conversation with him. In the below Q&A, we discussed a range of things including his process for creating his new book and some of the current realities of the book publishing industry.

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I think some people may have the misconception that gift books are easy to write, but I can see that a lot of work went into the museum book. Can you talk about your process for researching and creating the book?

Every book is different, and each has its challenges. And nowadays every book’s hardest part is after the last word is written and you need to find love for your book.

This particular book was such a joy to work on. The key to its success was gathering a team of helpers. It was logistically impossible to personally visit each museum. I would have loved to…but, there’s over 37,000. I couldn’t have done that in my lifetime. 

With museums so spread out I had to delegate and trust others. My system was there was no system. I saw as many museums as I could personally, sometimes going to three in one day, and reaching out to as many museum employees, curators, and visitors as humanly possible. Family, friends, and social media followers all pitched in. And then there was a front-line team of really hard workers; my wife, my agent, the publisher. There were spreadsheets and stacks of information collected. 

I first narrowed the choices of museums down to the top 150 before I had to cut that number in half to fit in the book. I took into account, the museum’s beauty, historical significance, its geographical and cultural diversity, and its role in the local and arts community, like providing educational programs.

Looking back, I have no idea how I finished so many illustrations. I got very little sleep and worked very long hours. But I was inspired and fueled by just coming home from seeing some of the world’s greatest artwork.

A page from Bob’s book illustrating the whale in the American Museum of Natural History in New York

Your book intro tells a funny and relatable story of you not being very excited about museums as a kid. Is there a museum in the book that you think you would have found more enjoyable to visit as a kid?

The American Visionary Museum in Baltimore is a great place not to bring any preconceptions of what you think art is. The Field Museum and American Museum of Natural History are the first chance for kids to get that close to animals that won’t kill you when you taunt them. Kids love dinosaurs and scale.

The Wenham House has an amazing train set. Then there’s Noah’s Ark Encounter, and there’s the maritime museums and their magnificent ships. There’s something for everyone and a lot for children instead of schlepping me to D.C. when I was a kid, reading plaques.

I know you’ve had a long career cartooning and writing books. What are some of the changes you’ve seen over the years?

Like everything, since 1982 when I was first published by The New York Times, the landscape for all forms of publishing, including music, photography, and cartooning, has changed drastically.

I’m going to warn you regarding my answer to your question; things are going to get worse before they get better. I could write a whole book on the subject, a book that I could easily publish now through a multitude of means but it would be a book that would never be harder to make a living from. There are over 4 million books published a year. The average American purchases one physical book a year. The odds of making a living from cartooning are even more astronomical. 

One reason for all this is a generation of reality shows convinced us that anyone can be a star. The Arts have become the amateur hour. Certainly, anyone can get a cartoon or a book published now, without having the proper skills. The bar is low so there is a glut of stand-ups, writers, artists, filmmakers, etc. It’s reflected in the quality of work out there. Established writers say to me, that they wish people everywhere would stop telling everyone they have a book in them. 

Conversely, there are also many more competent writers and artists out there due to the availability of workshops, advice, and sources to learn. But those skills unfortunately mean less because the criteria for getting accepted or published have less to do with merit and more to do with your number of followers and optics.

Having a platform for your voice has become more important than your actual voice. That’s not me having sour grapes but what editors, publishers, and agents are saying and telling me, and discussing among themselves—I’ve worked closely with many different publishers from the big houses to the smaller ones, and taking risks is not anyone’s top priority at the moment. Everyone is so fearful for their job that right now is not the time to take chances or look bad optically. Being creative is about taking chances.

One of Bob’s cartoons.

What advice do you have for someone interested in learning more about the craft of cartooning? Any resources or tips for learning?

I’ve been teaching writing, humor, and cartooning for over forty years and tuition has only gone up. But my Substack newsletter

The Bob

could not be cheaper and I share all the advice and tips I know along with those from the best writers and funniest humorists in the world. I recently did ten podcasts on creativity and how to be funnier (notice I didn’t say, “how to be funny.” Everyone can be funnier but you can’t teach someone how to be funny.)

What is something that has been making you laugh lately?

I have been celebrating the passing of the great Bob Newman, listening to his old albums. I realize this is not the first time I am sounding like an old fart, and I don’t feel like one, I’m still the same person who feels like they are walking into a classroom. But comedy really is in a rut. People are laughing at the wrong reasons, to either be politically correct, or afraid, or worse yet, at the expense of others because of hate. Humor used to fix things and bring people together. One of the elements of humor working is a semblance of intelligence. This country has gotten really stupid. Julie, did I bring down the room enough?

I really do appreciate this and enjoy discussing humor and writing, even if some of it is critical. I respect people’s time and if they got this far then they deserved raw, honest answers and not sugarcoated platitudes. Thanks.

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[Julie here again] Thanks for the honest answers in this interview, Bob. Check out Bob’s newsletter and new book and learn more about him at his website.

Also, please enjoy these photo outtakes from when I tried to get a good cat photo with Bob’s book:

*Note: This interview was lightly edited and condensed for clarity. This post may also contain affiliate links.