Professor Bill Foster’s exhibit of comic artwork featuring African-American characters (“Looking for a Face Like Mine”) opens this Saturday at 8pm at MoCCA. Foster is doing a walk-through for members at 7pm.

Looking for a Face Like Mine (showing May 12 to Sept. 10), examines the roles of African Americans in comics and cartoons, as both creators and characters. The exhibit is curated by Professor William H. Foster III, a comics creator, scholar and historian who has devoted much of the past fifteen years to tracing and teaching the history of African Americans as depicted in sequential art media.

“Blacks were deliberately left out of comics and American society for many years,” Foster noted. “On those rare occasions when we were included, we were misrepresented as savages, cannibals, simpletons, and worse. My research documents this important history both fair and foul, for all time, while there are still traces of it left.”

The exhibit includes comic strip artwork by 1950’s artist Alvin Hollingsworth (“Scorchy Smith”), contemporary cartoonist Keith Knight (“The K Chronicles”), and strip legend Morrie Turner (“Wee Pals”), as well as comic book art by Denys Cowan (“Black Panther”), Zina Saunders (“Static”), and underground cartoonist Larry Fuller (“New Funny Book”), among many others, along with panel cartoons and animation art.

Opening reception Saturday, May 12th at 8pm. (7pm for MoCCA Members) 594 Broadway, Suite 401 (between Houston and Prince Streets), Manhattan.