Comic Culture: A Collective Effort  

Please introduce yourself with your name, pronouns, where home is for you, what you do and one good thing you like or love about yourself. 

Hello, my name is Gladys Ochoa I go by She/Her and I’m the Museums Associate at the Cartoon Art Museum. I am pretty happy with my sense of humor and appreciate being able to chuckle at my own work.

How did you get interested in working at Museums? What made you get your master's in Museology/Museum Studies?

After college I took a chance at being an intern at the De Young in San Francisco. It wasn’t until I was doing a tour in Spanish that I realized this could be the path for me. I decided to get my master’s in museum studies to better support museums and artists.

How many museums have you worked for? 

Not counting internships, I would say 3 so far.

How did you get involved with the Cartoon Art Museum?

As part of the masters requirement, I needed an internship at a local museum. I remember as a kid having to go on free museum days because I couldn’t afford the transport fee and the museum ticket. And now I’m here.

How many roles do you play as a Museum Associate? What does all that entail and what was your favorite part?

Off the top of my head I help with: training volunteers/interns, graphic design, event planning, membership, e-newsletters, giving tours, translations in Spanish, maintaining the gift shop and lobby, and am one of the instructors that teach comics.

I want to say my favorite task is teaching comics, but I also enjoy event planning and just generally helping where I can.

What was your best memory from your early days at Cartoon Art?

Walking in the first day and seeing the work of someone I knew from college on the wall. Gave me a shock but also reminded me that the world is sometimes smaller than we believe.

What are some of the requirements of your job at museums that we have no idea happens or we overlook?

Not a lot of people understand how a museum operates compared to a gallery. Museums are a non-profit and require different revenues of income than that of a regular business. There is a responsibility in education and in stewardship of maintaining a collection.

When we think of jobs in a museum we may first think docent, and curator. However, there is more to it to help run the place. There is the curator, then there’s the registrar, the archivist, the human resources department, accounting, etc. Depending on museum size, those roles can be delegated to one person. In my case I do multiple roles, something I enjoy because it adds variation to my work.

How did you get involved with comics? Did that have any influence on working at Cartoon Art? 

I got involved through manga as a kid. My siblings really enjoyed Pokémon and would print out coloring pages for me. I have an older brother who is also an artist, and he helped me learn how to work digitally and shared his love of anime with me.

It definitely influenced me to work at the Cartoon Art Museum.

Do you have any aspirations of having your own museum or curating shows for museums?

The shoot for the moon dream is to be a director of a small or medium museum. Otherwise, I really enjoy helping in the development sector of museums and want to be a development director. In videogames I often take the supportive role to help the team, or in this case let me handle the paperwork so that artists are able to showcase their work.

You were the chair for the Prism Awards for 3 years, how did you get involved with that? What was your role? How did you like it and why did you agree to do it?

Turns out my mentor was one of the producers for the Prism Awards, and I had the availability to help. I’m always looking for ways to help the community and develop my skills in organizing. As chair I greatly enjoyed connecting artists with one another, and celebrating comics.

You are also a Co-organizer of the Sick and Disabled Fair. How do you juggle all of these things?

Coincidentally the team and I are taking a break because of burnout. But I would do my best to chip in where I could, whether it was creating social media or running events day of. Even something small that I could whip up for 10 minutes I’d try to do.

What does the future look like for you? Only share stuff you are comfortable with. 

I really wanna go visit international conventions including the Graphic Medicine conference. When I go to cons I enjoy collecting business cards to bring back to the museum to have on hand.

When you think of comic culture what are the things you appreciate that exist and what do you want to see change or see more of? If anything. 

I really appreciate all the memoirs being made and just that vulnerability to share with the world visually. I also would really love to see webcomics have the option to be available not only online but in print form.

Any last remarks?

The world is a scary place but I believe in the power of creating one’s own environment whether online or in person. As individuals its hard to remember that our actions even inactions affect others.