Jack Kirby Museum

A scant two days after Jack Kirby helped us (and just about every other comics blog) celebrate the Fourth of July, word comes from Mark Evanier about a new Jack Kirby Museum and Research Center. He's got a press release describing the project put together by cartoonist and web designer Randolph Hoppe and supported by the Kirby Family and the head of TwoMorrows Publishing John Morrow, who puts out The Jack Kirby Collector. The press release includes the organization's mission statement:

The Jack Kirby Museum and Research Center is organized exclusively for educational purposes; more specifically, to promote and encourage the study, understanding, preservation and appreciation of the work of Jack Kirby by:

illustrating the scope of Kirby's multi-faceted career,

communicating the stories, inspirations and influences of Jack Kirby,

celebrating the life of Jack Kirby and his creations, and

building understanding of comicbooks and comicbook creators.

To this end, the Museum will sponsor and otherwise support study, teaching, conferences, discussion groups, exhibitions, displays, publications and cinematic, theatrical or multimedia productions.

The organization is starting out small, developing an online Catalogue Raisonné, which is intended to be exhaustive list of Kirby's body of work, but the organizers hope to build up to a bricks-and-mortar location with exhibits and a hard-copy collection. They also hope to include contributions from Kirby's collaborators, such as Joe Simon, with whom Kirby worked throughout the '40s and '50s on series such as Captain America, Sandman, and Boy Commandos, and Stan Lee, his co-architect of the Marvel Universe. I guess this would be where some of that missing Fantastic Four movie money might have come in handy.