A Few Words On The Something Else Entirely Exhibiiton

Something Else Entirely; The Illustration Art of Edward Gorey at The Society of Illustrators, is a centennial exhibition that celebrates Edward Gorey’s unique relationships with literature and the authors who create it. Mounting this exhibition has been a monumental undertaking that would not have been possible without the dedication and combined efforts of The Society of Illustrators, the Edward Gorey Charitable Trust, and the cooperation of five collectors who lent pieces for the show. Originally scheduled to close on January 3, 2026, the exhibition has been extended and will now terminate on February 7, 2026.

As one of the four curators (and a lender) for the exhibition, I have been intimately involved with the planning and execution of this show from the beginning. It was the intention that fellow curator/collector Russell Lehrer and myself would give a guided tour of the show at the October 16th opening celebration. With over 1100 patrons flooding the building, the crowd quickly became so great that the scheduled gallery tour had to be cancelled. This exhibition set a new opening night attendance record at the Society. Fortunately, since the show's opening Mr. Lehrer has been able to guide numerous tours of the exhibition throughout the run. In the spirit of what might have been, I offer my personal introduction to the exhibition below.

Something Else Entirely, The Illustration Art of Edward Gorey 

Edward Gorey understood that books are more than just a conveyance for ideas, they are objects that a reader interacts with intimately. Reading a book requires a commitment of both time and intellectual energy; holding books close and turning the pages, unlocking their secrets and discovering the stories they tell. Experiencing a book with illustrations can deepen and enhance these connections.

Gorey was able to deftly create a single cover image or illuminate a manuscript with a series of wittily insightful drawings. Something Else Entirely is the first exhibition of Edward Gorey’s work that focuses solely on art created for authors other than himself. The 106 pieces included in this exhibition follow the progression of Gorey’s illustration work over his 50 year professional career. Many of the pieces included in the exhibition are on loan from private collectors and are being publicly displayed for the first time. 

Edward Gorey was an artistic genius who combined his talent for drawing and deep love of literature into a life-long career as a commercial illustrator. Gorey spent the first decade of his career working in the art departments of Anchor Books and The Looking Glass Library, honing his skills while he learned the ins and outs of the publishing business. Gorey then became an in-demand freelance illustrator whose commercial work allowed him to be an author and illustrator of his own works, which were often self-published. This exhibition sidesteps those classic pieces to focus on the lesser known images he created for a dizzying variety of authors and publications.

Edward Gorey was a cultural omnivore who brought wit and humor to his illustrations, often in unexpected ways. Gorey responded to the stories he was hired to illuminate by inserting his own visual references into the illustrations, adding depth to the texts from his own unique perspective. For some books, like The Very Fine Clock by Muriel Spark, (published by A.A. Knopf, 1968), Gorey adds so much subtext to the drawings that he seems at times to be illustrating a completely different tale. For others, like Rumplestiltskin (retold by Edith Tarkov, published by Scholastic Books, 1972) and Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats (by T.S. Eliot, published by Harcourt Brace Janovich, 1982), Gorey’s amusing illustrations add whimsy and a sense of playfulness to the texts.

This exhibition includes many rarities such as the original art for Edward Gorey’s first published illustration – a cover drawing for the cover of the May 1950 commencement issue of The Harvard Advocate (shown above). Continuing through highlights of his work from the next 50 years, the exhibit ends with the final piece of original art to leave Gorey’s drawing table in early 2000 – a cover design for Sarah Caudwell’s murder mystery The Sybil in Her Grave (published by Delacorte Press, 2000, shown below). 

When sitting down with a book that has illustrations, the reader looks first at the artwork, then reads the words.

The two pieces in the exhibition from The Haunted Looking Glass (various authors, published by The Looking Glass Library, 1959) show Gorey’s command of pen & ink to create moody, atmospheric images. For The Haunted Looking Glass, Gorey was given free reign to chose twelve classic horror stories and provide a full page title illustration for each.  Gorey knew that the readers would first encounter the drawing for each story and search the image for clues to what lay ahead. He stated that creating art for this book was particularly challenging because he wanted to intrigue the reader but didn’t want to give anything away.

Viewing original art by Edward Gorey is a visceral experience. When printed in a book, illustrations become part of the book and often lose the three dimensional quality present in the actual drawings. Black and white illustrations become the same uniform tone of black as the type when printed, whereas looking at the original art the viewer becomes aware of how Gorey created the piece, noting the ways in which the ink interacts with the surface of the paper.

In areas of dense crosshatching, the surface of the paper becomes scarred by the pen nib and buckles slightly as the ink soaks into the paper itself, creating a deeper tone of blackness from the surrounding ink lines. Fine lines sit lightly, almost floating on the surface, indicating that the pen nib barely touched the paper. Ink washes applied with a paint brush become three dimensional puddles of color that have variations showing how the ink overlaps on itself as it was painted onto the surface. These inky pools of color become one flat tone of black when printed, but have the vibrancy of the artist's touch on the original artwork. The illustration for Growltiger's Last Stand from Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats is a master class showing all of Gorey's pen and ink techniques effortlessly combined into a single drawing.

Gorey’s use of color can be breathtakingly subtle. Although he often claimed self-deprecatingly that he wasn’t much of a colorist and painted in muted tones, pieces like Lilliput (unpublished magazine cover circa 1950 - 1953) and Sam and Emma (author Donald Nelsen, published by Parents' Magazine Press 1971, shown above) demonstrate a sophisticated colorist who knew how to employ color to move the viewer’s eye around an image. 

Gorey was also fond of intensely lurid colors and used them to great effect. The cover painting for Is by Joan Aiken (the 9th book in the Wolves series, published by Yearling in 1992), is almost literally a blaze of intense oranges, and the five pieces created for TV Guide magazine (various dates including the pig picnic shown below) demonstrate how Gorey would use intense color to enliven and punch up an image.

Something Else Entirely, The Illustration Art Of Edward Gorey covers a wide variety of subjects and provides a rare opportunity to view the range of Edward Gorey’s consummate ability and creativity as an artist and working illustrator. His skill at creating intriguing and beautiful images is amply demonstrated by the pieces on display in the show, and his drawings often lead the viewer to consider...something else entirely. This seminal retrospective of Gorey's illustration career is on display through the beginning of February. 

Images and photographs courtesy The Edward Gorey Charitable Trust, Irwin Terry, and Russell Lehrer.