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Britain on Wednesday opened its first museum dedicated to cartoons, caricatures, comics and animation spanning the last three centuries of British political, cultural and social life.
The museum in central London offers visitors 1,200 examples of British cartoon art since the 18th century.
"There has never been a cartoon museum here... In spite of the very strong historical tradition here, there has always been a very strong ambivalence towards comic art," curator Anita O'Brien told AFP.
"In France, it is very different. The French appreciate it. They appreciate 'bande desinee' as an art form in itself," O'Brien said.
Besides France, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, Poland, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and the United States all have cartoon museums, according to a statement from the new museum in London.
"I think in Great Britan there is a certain snobbery attached to art," O'Brien said.
"People don't consider that something that makes them laugh is high art. They do not expect to go to the Louvre (in Paris) or to the Royal Academy or to the Tate (in London) to laugh," O'Brien said.
Cartoons are dismissed because they are "produced commercially, for the masses", she said. "In the minds of some people, this diminishes their value," she added.
On display are "Dennis the Menace" cartoons, HM Bateman's "Behind the scenes at Wellington Barracks", Gerald Scarf's "Chairman Mao", Steve Bell's "The End of the Affair" and Sir David Low's "All behind you, Winston", a classic war cartoon.
The "collection reflects a British sense of humour", which is difficult to define but "includes a tradition of disrespect", according to Bell, the cartoonist for the Guardian newspaper.
"Political cartoons are disturbing," Bell told AFP.
"It is a powerful medium... but I never knew there could be cartoon riots," he said.
Riots have raged worldwide this month since several European newspapers reprinted caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed which first appeared in a Danish newspaper in September 2005.
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AFP 221856 GMT 02 06
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