Michelle Maguire works as an archivist at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum, a wonderful, robust and invaluable research collection bursting with books and periodicals, original art, newspaper tear sheets, fan mail/hate mail, journals/diaries/sketchbooks—anything that helps to paint a picture of the life of a cartoonist. She is a collector of mass-produced printed ephemera, including homespun CB radio cards, business cards, menus, napkins, and postcards containing squeakers.

Maguire is also a visual artist whose work often takes on book form—her self-published, small-edition books that draw from family anecdotes, personal memories, and everyday observations have achieved institutional recognition, being held in the permanent collections of major universities and museum libraries.

A 2023 New York Public Library Picture Collection Artist Fellow, her work has in recent years become more research-based: “As soon as I started working that way I was hooked. I enjoy all of the different directions I'm taken when digging through an archive, relying on and trusting chance and intuition, as well as an openness to connection and surprise. There’s nothing like the thrill of seeing where the hunt takes you. I feel extremely lucky to be able to spend a nice chunk of time in the Lab, and the ties to nearby research collections that come along with it."

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