When award-winning graphic novelist, illustrator, and long-time DART contributor Peter Kuper first spent time in Oaxaca, Mexico back in 2006, he fell hopelessly in love with the majestic monarch butterfly. During his first two-year stay, he regularly posted his richly illustrated Oaxaca Journal—which later became the acclaimed book, Diario de Oaxaca. It was almost inevitable that his fascination with our six-legged friends would eventually culminate in a site-specific celebration of knowledge and visual storytelling. 

Now, Kuper’s cinematic, sequential art has found a spectacular home inside the Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation at the American Museum of Natural History. Titled Monarch’s Journey, this stunning new permanent installation masterfully envelopes the second-floor gallery, trading text-heavy academic plaques for graphic narrative techniques. Co-curated by the museum’s own Jessica Ware, the exhibition transforms the grueling 3,000-mile autumn migration into a vibrant visual epic.

By framing meticulous research with the raw, emotional power of illustration, Kuper bridges the gap between active scientific research and the chaotic beauty of the natural world. It is a breathtaking reminder of why we continue to study the artist’s hand and mind in this accelerated digital environment .

American Museum of Natural History, 200 Central Park West, New York, NY Info

Just in from the Home Office

When the crisp November air takes over Manhattan, the creative community knows exactly where to find its center. The annual AI-AP book launch—famously known as The PARTY—returns on Thursday, November 12, 2026, transforming the historic Angel Orensanz Foundation into an electric showcase of visual storytelling. 

This isn’t just an industry gathering; it’s a centrifuge all its own where emerging illustrators and photographers rub elbows with their idols, and with seasoned art directors, and where the hard-bound realities of American Photography 42 and American Illustration 45 make their official debut. Over at American Illustration 45, Phoebe Flynn Rich's creative direction brings us a luxurious 384-page volume anchored by a hand-turned spinning wheel cover by Katherine Streeter. Right alongside it, American Photography 42 captures a striking cross-section of editorial and fine-art grit designed by Mike Schnaidt and Erin Hollaway Palmer. For anyone with an appetite for the experimental and the year's absolute best imagery, it's the ultimate night to meet, mix, and mingle on the edge of visual culture. 

Click to register. Click to pre-order discount copies of AI45 and AP42

With that in mind, check out what a few more of AI-AP DART subscribers are up to:

Stephen Frailey, long-time DART subscriber and creator of the award-winning DEAR DAVE magazine on photography and writing, has finally stepped into the limelight for his own work, Plaster Not Milk.  This collection of his photographs in unexpected dialogue with one another over forty years, is equal parts mirth and conceptual inquiry as images explore various themes and preoccupations. It is notable that the work, a somewhat hybrid of collage and still life is analog, despite a resemblance and affinity for digital culture and in some instances seeming to preview advances in recent image construction. The book has a forword by Lucas Blalock and an Afterword by Lynne Tillman.

Frailey notes that “this way of working has been nimble, proven to support a variety of ideas, the agenda shifting with the passage of time. It is a methodology that has become incrementally complex, supporting a train of thought without fixed margins.”

 “In a gulf between seeing and naming,” he says, “my work often loads the frame with familiar visual motifs divested of 'meaning' and closed conclusions, to destabilize conventional expectations of content. This contradiction of visual clarity and abstract thought, between representation and abstraction, recalls my education as a painter”. Stay tuned for book launch events.

Tom Cocotos, whose work occupies numerous editions of AI, opens his studio doors on Wednesday, October 28, at 7:30pm. This is what he wrote: 

I’ve recently joined Persimmon Art, a curated platform for discovering artists and their work. To celebrate, they’re hosting a live evening in my Chelsea studio, and I’d love for you to join us—whether you’re in New York or watching from wherever you are.

We’ll look at work on the walls and in progress, talk about the unexpected materials I collect around the world and the stories behind the images, and see where the conversation takes us. It will be informal, with friends and fellow artists joining in, and plenty of room for your questions. If you’re in New York, come by for a glass of wine, some conversation, and a look around the studio. While you’re there, follow me on Persimmon to watch my videos where I discuss some of my recent work, and see what’s coming next. RSVP [required]

Lauren Simkin Berke currently has their sixth solo show at A.I.R. Gallery in Brooklyn. 

Notes on Gesture marks a shift in Berke’s practice, both in scale and technique, while maintaining drawing as the organizing structure. Over the last few years Berke has been drawing more with thick lines, using both improvisational and observational instincts. These drawings are done quickly, drawn with paint markers, requiring a full engagement of the artist’s hand, arm, and body, in contrast with the small movements they have used for the last twenty years, drawing with fine tipped mechanical pens and dip pens. Above: Beach Room, 2026

 The resulting works propose to ignite a memory of experience, whether it be observed or imagined, exterior or interior: improvisational drawings made through a process the artist calls "shapes into things." Ultimately, Notes on Gesture is about focusing on the core of things, letting go of the ego of youth, and waiting to see what emerges.

Through October 0 at A.I.R. Gallery, 155 Plymouth Street, Brooklyn, NY Info

Meanwhile, over in Oakland, Vivienne Flesher, previously a long-time New York illustrator, has a show of more than 30 recent digital collages at The Fourth Wall gallery. The works in Thirteen Ways of Looking at  a Blackbird, a title that derives from a poem by Wallace Stevens, are personal projects she began making when she released herself from the requirements of commercial illustration assignments. Above: The Wind Descended With Cooling Down the Nerves, 2025

This work, she explained, “utilized photos from my travels as well as personal objects, drawings and paintings, plus signs and typography discovered I made while walking in [around in Shanghai.  At the time] I was working on my own but would share my personal work and photography only with the few art directors who are themselves artists in their own right. They, in turn, took chances with my computer-generated images—for example, the Kennedy Center JAPAN! Project—which I turned into a show at Stir Gallery in Shanghai."

Through November 7 at The Fourth Wall, 473 25th Street, Oakland, CA Info