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Artist Chris Ware Raises the Roof

Chris Ware’s Building Stories (September 23, 2000), Introduction 3 (2005).Image courtesy of the artist and Adam Baumgold Gallery, New York.

In 2005, cartoon artist Chris Ware (think iconic New Yorker covers, Acme Novelty Library) launched The New York Times Magazine’s “Funny Pages” with 30 weekly drawings, each illustrating the evolving history of a Chicago apartment building. In them, meticulously recorded mundane facts (617 dead plants, 18 spilled ink bottles, 158,854 lit matches) meet sentimentality (28,224 hugs, 29 marriages, 11,627 lost childhood memories). Ware’s show of New Yorker covers, cartoons, and the rest of Building Stories is on display at the uptown Adam Baumgold gallery through March 15. —Rachel Wolff

Artist Chris Ware Raises the Roof