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Garry Apgar (born October 6, 1945) is an American cartoonist, illustrator, art historian, writer, and editor. His research and writing have concentrated primarily on the French writer Voltaire, public art in America and Europe, the French painter Jacques-Louis David, Walt Disney, and Mickey Mouse. Apgar’s profusely illustrated, 336-page monograph, Mickey Mouse: Emblem of the American Spirit (2016)^[1], and his anthology of over eighty articles and essays in A Mickey Mouse Reader (2015)^[2], are the two most authoritative resources on Disney’s iconic mouse currently in print.

Apgar has also published two books of quotations: Quotes for Conservatives: Wit, Wisdom, and Insight from Conservatives throughout History (2020)^[3] and The Quotable Voltaire (2021).^[4] His cartoons and drawings have appeared in the New York Times, National Review, and New York Daily News, and in the French periodicals L’Express, Le Canard Enchaîné, Pilote, and Paris Metro, in addition to the Parisian dailies Le Figaro and Libération.

Garry Apgar was raised in North Plainfield, New Jersey. He earned a B.A. at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, where he was a student of artist-in-residence Ray Prohaska, former president of the National Illustrators Society.^[5] From April 1968 to July 1970 Apgar served in Vietnam as a motor transport officer and combat artist with the 1st Marine Division press office.^[6][7]

In December 1972, Apgar was hired as the staff artist and political cartoonist for the Roanoke Times, in Roanoke, Virginia. In August 1976, he moved to Paris where he freelanced as a cartoonist and journalist while earning two degrees at the Paris-Sorbonne University: a Licence ès lettres, June 1977, and a Maîtrise ès lettres, November 1979.

In 1988, Apgar received a PhD in art history from Yale University. He has taught art history as a visiting professor at Brown University, the University of Delaware, Princeton, Université Lumière–Lyon 2, in France, and from 2021 to 2023, at Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, where he taught a class on public art and semester-long seminars on “The Art of Walt Disney.”

In May 1996, Apgar co-founded the Voltaire Foundation of America Inc., a now-defunct non-profit 501(c)(3) charity organization. The VSA sponsored two major projects. The first of these projects was a 30-minute documentary narrated by the Academy Award-winning actor Cliff Robertson, Voltaire & Jefferson: The Sage of Ferney and the Man From Monticello, which aired on the PBS station in New York on January 27, 2002. The second project was a bilingual reference work, The Quotable Voltaire, co-edited by Apgar and Edward Langille for the Bucknell University Press.^[4]

In 2022, Apgar was hired by Diane Disney Miller, Walt Disney’s daughter, to develop a comprehensive traveling exhibition devoted to Mickey Mouse. His two books on Mickey have been widely praised. Art critic Steven Heller wrote in Wired magazine that A Mickey Mouse Reader^[2] “makes a detailed and compelling case for Mickey’s (and therefore Disney’s) essential cultural relevance.”^[8] In the U.K., Emblem of the American Spirit was described in the Times Literary Supplement as “engaging and tirelessly informative.”^[9] Animation historian Jerry Beck called it “intelligent, detailed, thorough and important. The final word on the subject and a great read.”^[10] Former Time magazine critic Stefan Kanfer, in City Journal, said: “Apgar’s narrative is surprisingly candid. Though Mickey Mouse: Emblem of the American Spirit was financed by the Walt Disney Family Foundation, it gives plenty of space to the subject’s most malicious adversaries.”^[11] A French-language edition of Emblem of the American Spirit was published in 2016.^[12]

A noted authority in Europe and the United States, on both Disney and Disney’s signature character, Apgar is often cited online and in print, referencing Walt Disney's unparalleled impact on America and his fellow Americans. In September 2023, in an interview for a special issue of Life magazine, Apgar said, “If there’s any unifying cultural force in America that transcends most of our differences it would be Disney.”^[13] The following month, he told the Los Angeles Times that “Disney was the most consequential figure in the history of American culture.”^[14]

In 2017, Apgar was named one of fifteen “Apgars in America Who Are Making or Made a Difference in America.”^[15] In April 2026, he was inducted into the North Plainfield (New Jersey) High School Hall of Fame.^[16] In addition, since May 2024, he has helped expand a website sponsored by Trinity College, devoted to public art sites throughout Connecticut (publicartct.org).

• “Voltaire, Superstar,” Paris Metro, June 21, 1978, p. 15.
• “Une Célébration Bien Discrète,” Le Monde, September 8, 1978, p. 3, essay on the bicentennial commemoration of the death of Voltaire.
• “Le Grand Charlie et le Petit Mickey,” Paris Metro, November 11, 1978,” p. 6
• “The Age of Diderot?,” Art in America, February 1985, pp. 107-115.
• “Public Art and the Remaking of Barcelona,” Art in America, February 1991, pp. 108-121, 159.
• “Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825) … A Critical View,” Apollo, May 1993, pp. 304-315.
• L’Art Singulier de Jean Huber: Voir Voltaire. Paris: Adam Biro, 1995. ISBN: 9782876601581, OCLC: 33247504.
• “When David Became David: David’s Debt to Voltaire and the Philosophes,” Histoire de l’Art (Lyon), June 2003, pp. 29-36.
• A Mickey Mouse Reader. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2014. ISBN: 9781628461039, OCLC 878837768.
• Mickey Mouse: Emblem of the American Spirit. San Francisco: Walt Disney Family Foundation Press, 2015. ISBN: 9781616286729, OCLC: 852226387.
• Mickey Mouse: Icône du Rêve Américain. Grenoble: Glénat Éditions, 2016. ISBN: 9782344015964, OCLC: 968710399.
• “Disney in Connecticut,” Connecticut Magazine, April 2016, pp. 41-50.
• “‘Initial’ Thoughts on Production Innovations at The Walt Disney Studios in the Mid 1930s,” 2019 Hyperion Historical Alliance Annual, March 2019, pp. 31-42.
• The Men of Company C: A Memorial Record of Charlie Company, The Basic School, Quantico, Virginia, Class of January 1968 (TBS 3-68). Fairfield, CT, 2019. WorldCat.org/title/1327782754.
• Quotes for Conservatives. New York: Center Street/Hachette, 2020. ISBN: 9781546085881, OCLC: 1155639136.
• “‘Who Is Picasso?’: Walt Disney and High Culture,” 2021 Hyperion Historical Alliance Annual, 2023, pp. 71-109 (final proof, inexplicably “spiked”). www.academia.edu/166821621/_Walt_Disney_and_High_Culture_
• Co-editor with Edward M. Langille, The Quotable Voltaire. Lewisburg, Pennsylvania: Bucknell University Press, 2022. ISBN: 9781684482917, OCLC: 1176318584.

• “Signs of the Times: Print News Imagery in the Visual Arts,” in Garry Apgar, Shaun O’L. Higgins, Colleen Striegel, The Newspaper in Art. Spokane, Washington: New Media Ventures, 1996, pp. 1-79 (illus.).
• “La « Voltairiade » de Jean Huber,” in: Jean-Daniel Candaux and Érica Deuber-Pauli, ed., Voltaire chez lui: Genève et Ferney. Geneva, Skira, 1994, pp. 106-135 (illus.).
• “An Anglo-Swiss Connection in the Age of Voltaire: Jean Huber’s British Friends and Relations,” in Kathleen Hardesty Doig and Dorothy Medlin, ed., British-French Exchanges in the Eighteenth Century. Newcastle, U.K., Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007, pp. 274-287.
• “A la Recherche du Metro Perdu,” about Apgar’s experience with the Paris Metro city magazine, 1978-1979, in Patsi Benter-Krakoff and Joel Stratte-McClure, ed., The Paris Metro 40th Anniversary Issue: The Book About Paris Yesterday (2016), pp. 138-140 (illus.).

• Co-author and art advisor, Voltaire & Jefferson: The Sage of Ferney and the Man From Monticello (2001), produced by Dennis Powers Productions and Della Robbia Productions for the Voltaire Society of America, distributed by Films for the Humanities. Recipient of the 2001 Aurora Awards Gold Award, and the 2001 New York Festivals Gold Medal, in the Film and Video category. ISBN: 9781421306643.

• Garry Apgar at Academia.edu
• Garry Apgar at Amazon.com