In The West Gallery
The Art of Eric Carle: Family and Friends
April 1 - September 4, 2011

To mark the 40th anniversary of the publication of Do You Want to Be My Friend? The Carle has mounted an exhibition featuring the theme of friendship. This book is dedicated to Eric’s boyhood friend from Syracuse, Carlton Mayer. Despite an almost 20-year hiatus, this friendship remained true, and they re-united when Eric returned to America in 1952. Because of the important theme of friendship, Eric has long acknowledged this book as his favorite. To celebrate this anniversary a group of works from this book and several others where friendship is an underlying theme are on view. In some cases these bonds are between people, as in The Tiny Seed(1987); in others, such as The Lamb and Butterfly(1988), animals befriend each other. In a recent book, Where Are You Going? To See My Friend(2002), friendship connects two cultures—Japan and America. And finally, it seemed appropriate to point out the folly of not wanting friendship, so wonderfully captured in The Grouchy Ladybug (1977).