Addams Family Art Gallery

A new gallery of Charles Addams cartoons will be displayed in the Digiplex Rialto Theater of Westfield, a 90-year old institution that was depicted in many of Addams' best work for The New Yorker magazine and elsewhere.  The unveiling coincides with the 100th anniversary of Addams' birth and is a fund-raiser for the Charles Addams Art Scholarship.

The creator of the famed The Addams Family TV show and Broadway production, Addams lived in Westfield and attended Westfield High School.  The gallery inside the Digiplex Rialto Theater lobby will depict copies of many of Addams' favorite cartoons.  There will be a series of cartoons which will be replaced periodically.  Each will be selected by Addams historian and founder of the Charles Addams Art Scholarship, Ron MacCloskey, from a trove of over 1,300 Addams cartoons. 

The unveiling will be held today at 4:30pm and hosted by A. Dale "Bud" Mayo, digital theater pioneer and entrepreneur and chairman and CEO of Digital Cinema Destinations Corp., (NASDAQ: DCIN), and Ron MacCloskey.

Charles Samuel Addams or "Chill" as his friends called him, was born on January 7, 1912, in Westfield.  Records show at the time of his birth the Addams' lived on Summit Avenue.  They moved several times before taking up permanent residence in 1920 on Elm Street and stayed there until 1947.  He attended public school in Westfield and was fond of visiting the Presbyterian Cemetery on Mountain Ave.  He worked at The New Yorker magazine from 1940 until his death in 1988, leaving behind over 1,300 cartoons.