Comedy Center opens an exhibition dedicated to the civic engagement of the legendary television producer | News, Sports, Vacancies

Lear died at age 101 in December 2023, having dedicated his life to defending Americans’ right to equal participation in the democratic process, starting with the right to vote. Lear’s contributions are celebrated with an installation in the Comedy Center galleries and an accompanying online exhibition, featuring both rare archival footage and specially curated clips from Lear’s sitcoms.

The exhibition will be on view in the galleries of the National Comedy Center in Jamestown, New York until 2025 and online at ComedyCenter.org/Lear.

Shepard Fairey’s original work will be featured thanks to the People for The American Way “Artists for Democracy” campaign founded by Lear in 1981.

“My husband Norman would be happy to know that the National Comedy Center is using humor to shine a light on the importance of voting and protecting democracy,” said Lyn Davis Lear. “From combat missions during World War II to the circulation of our nation’s Declaration of Independence, Norman fought throughout his life to ensure that all Americans had the freedom to participate in our democratic process.”

Pictured is Norman Lear speaking at an event hosted by the Paley Center for Media. AP file photo

The multimedia installation explains how, before political humor became a mainstay of modern American entertainment, the work of Norman Lear proved that political discourse not only had a place in popular culture… but that sharp, smart comedy could attract a huge, dispersed, and diverse audience. ordinary Americans in meaningful conversations about the democratic process and each of our roles in it. Lear once said, “All in the Family” is a comedy show, but it deals with very real issues that are part of our society. It was my way of starting a conversation.”

Lear’s groundbreaking sitcoms, including All in the Family, Maude, Good Times and Sanford and Son, not only entertained 120 million Americans each week, but also offered a vision of how dinner table debates were conducted, organized districts and appear at local polling places. the place was an accessible—and meaningful—foundation of American democracy.

“Norman Lear elevated his art to match the gravity of his sociopolitical moment, promoting an optimistic belief in the power and potential of an engaged population,” said Journey Gunderson, executive director of the National Comedy Center.

Lear, an early supporter of the National Comedy Center’s mission to create the first official archive and museum dedicated to preserving the legacy of comedy, held beliefs synergistic with the center’s own approach to historical work: namely, the idea that artifacts representing our common past created are most meaningful when they are accessible to the public and connected to the present.

In 2000, Lear and his wife Lyn Davis Lear purchased one of Dunlap Broadside’s few surviving copies of the Declaration of Independence to share with the American people in all 50 states as part of the Declaration of Independence Tour. As a result of the Make Your Voice initiative more than four million new young voters were registered in the 2004, 2006 and 2008 elections.

On Lear’s 99th birthday in 2021, he reflected: “The right to vote is fundamental. It lies at the heart of everything I have fought for in war and in peace. Protecting voting rights should not be today’s fight. But that’s true. And this means that this is our fight, yours and mine, as long as we have breath and strength.”

Lear was a six-time Emmy Award winner, a Kennedy Center Honoree, a Peabody Distinguished Service Award winner and a member of the first class of inductees into the Television Academy Hall of Fame. When President Clinton presented Lear with the National Medal of Arts in 1999, he noted, “Norman Lear held up a mirror to American society and changed the way we look at it.”