THEMUSEUMS

Carl Barks was never a dedicated museum-goer. He would rather spend his sparse leisure time going for a spin and photograph sceneries for use in his work or sit quietly at home and dabble with painting work, but occasionally museums became a small part of his life in connection with his job. In 1937, when employed at Disney's, he let Donald Duck have quite an adventure in an art deco museum of modern inventions, including a run-in with a robotic nurse and a robot barber's chair (Modern Inventions).
When Barks dreamed up his comic book stories he made 4 stories in which Donald spends time in different museums in Duckburg. Then, in 1994, when Barks visited Europe for the first and only time, he visited a string of different museums. This page briefly describes the two sets of 'encounters' - Donald's and Barks'.

DONALD IN MUSEUMS

Donald was a guest in one Duckburg museum and employed in three others:


FC0029 The Mummy's Ring - 1943 Donald visits the Egyptian room at the Duckburg Museum.


FC0223 Lost in the Andes - 1949 Donald is third assistant janitor at the Museum of Natural Science.


FC0408 The Golden Helmet - 1952 Donald is assistant guard at the Duckburg Museum.


WDCS231 The Wax Museum - 1959 Donald is a night watchman at the Wax Museum.

BARKS IN MUSEUMS

Barks visited several European countries during his triumphant promotion tour in 1994 and he was invited to visit a number of museums as part of the national programs. This is a brief summary of some of Barks' whereabouts in chronological order. More detailed accounts can be found HERE.


NORWAY (museum visited June 4th) The Viking Ship Museum (Vikingskipshuset) houses several Viking ship discoveries from around the Oslo Fjord. The exhibitions incorporate the world's two best preserved wooden Viking ships built in the 9th century. The ships were used as tombs for noble people and they were buried with everything they thought would be needed in the afterlife such as jewels, weapons, food, furniture - and servants. In FC0408 The Golden Helmet Barks made many references to the Viking age.

DENMARK
(museum visited June 9th)

The National Museum (Nationalmuseet) houses vast and detailed exhibitions from prehistoric times up to today. Several additional sub-museums housing special eras such as Viking museums and medieval museums, as well as a World War 2 museum, are scattered all over the country. The museum was the first to exhibit 13 of Barks' oil paintings flown in from the USA. During the tour the paintings were exhibited in a few of the other countries as well.

POLAND
(museum visited June 22nd)

The National Museum (Muzeum Narodowe w Warszawie) is based in an imposing modernist building and contains an impressive collection of medieval as well as pre-and-post 20th Century art. Barks judged a children's drawing contest at the museum.

GERMANY
(museum visited June 25th)

The Art Museum (Württembergischer Kunstverein) in Stuttgart is a famous exhibition center for both domestic and foreign art. The museum hosted the same exhibition of Barks' oil paintings which had been first presented in Denmark.


HOLLAND (museum visited July 12th) The National Museum (Rijksmuseum) based in Amsterdam houses Holland's largest presentation of art and history. Most notable is a collection of paintings by Rembrandt which especially impressed Barks being a painter himself. The illustration shows Rembrandt's most famous work called The Night Watch.


ENGLAND (museum visited July 18th) London's Cartoon Museum (National Museum of Cartoon Art) is dedicated to preserving the best of British cartoons, caricatures, comics and animation. It offers a gallery, archives and innovative exhibitions. Since Barks visited the museum it has moved to larger premises, which is why explanatory photos are not included here.

EXTRA

Here are a few relevant museums which Barks never visited:

Klamath County Museum

USA

Florida's International Museum of Cartoon Art - which was originally founded as the Museum of Cartoon Art by cartoonist Mort Walker in 1974 - was created to collect, preserve and exhibit original works of cartoon art from all over the world. It has now moved to other locales (see more HERE). In 1996 a national jury voted Barks into the museum's Hall of Fame.

Barks' third wife, Garé, was an extremely talented and productive landscape painter and many of her paintings were bought by the Leanin' Tree Museum of Western Art in Colorado (see more HERE). Regrettably, her work is no longer on display at the museum.

After Barks' death his birthplace, Klamath County in Oregon, decided to make a permanent exhibition in the Klamath County Museum in honour of the area's greatest son (see more HERE).