Pittsburgh may become a toon town in the not-too distant future.

Step one is this weekend's opening of The ToonSeum Gallery, a new cartoon gallery space in the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh. Cartoonist Joe Wos, whose combined storytelling and drawing performances have been part of Children's Museum programming for 16 years, is ToonSeum curator and founder.

The exhibits will feature cartoon art in a variety of forms, such as animation, comic books, comic strips, video-game art and anime. The exhibits will change every two or three months.

The first -- "From Illustration to Animation" (Oct. 13-Dec. 31) -- is designed to illustrate the process behind cartooning and how books come to life through cartoons. It will include drawings from "Charlotte's Web"; the original French version of "Babar"; "Hakugei -- The Legend of Moby Dick," a Japanese update of the Herman Melville novel; "Winnie the Pooh"; "Lord of the Rings"; and more.

Next is "Plot Threads," which explores how story lines are developed and features regional artists from the Great Lakes Cartoonists group, and "Kidding Around," a look at how children are portrayed in such comics as "Peanuts" and "Dennis the Menace."

The gallery is designed to appeal to all ages of Children's Museum visitors, because every generation has its favorite comics. For many young children, Wos notes, this will be their introduction to the world of museums: "We're trying to avoid the stuffiness that comes with being a museum."

The ToonSeum Gallery is not part of the Children's Museum, but rather a temporary roommate. The goal is to launch ToonSeum as a separate, nonprofit cartoon and comic art museum in two or three years.

Pittsburgh is the perfect place for a space to preserve cartoon art, Wos says. "There's a rich history of cartooning in Pittsburgh."

He has received encouragement and financial support from Jean Schulz, the widow of "Peanuts" creator Charles Schulz.

When the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, Calif., opened in 2002, Wos was invited to the weekend opening as a resident artist to do his cartoon/storytelling performances and conduct workshops. He continues to go there every three or four months.

Back home, Wos is looking at North Side locations for ToonSeum, because he feels it will blend well with the Children's Museum, The Andy Warhol Museum and the Mattress Factory -- all of which are nontraditional gallery spaces.

The bulk of the ToonSeum displays are on loan from Wos' private collection. "The ToonSeum is also building its own collection and has received art donated from cartoonists worldwide," Wos says. Some pieces have come from local artist Wayno, and others from nationally known artists such as Greg Evans ("Luann") and Dan Piraro ("Bizarro") . An artifact in the exhibit is a 1930s drawing table from Walt Disney's first California studio.

There are only a handful of museums devoted to cartoon art, including the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco, the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art in New York and the Schulz Museum.

Jean Schulz has worked tirelessly as museum president to preserve the history of "Peanuts" and to showcase work by other cartoon artists.

While cartoons are popular art, they're not always treated like art, she says. "In the '20s and '30s, the funny pages were the equivalent of television," she says. "People couldn't wait to read the next day. It was an active story they were following." Political cartoons became a way of preserving history through their topical references, Schulz says. And comic art has evolved into a contemporary genre: graphic novels.

All of this "grew out of the drive of people who loved the story combined with the pictures," she says. "It's a valuable art form that has never been considered art."

"It takes a love of the art and a love of sharing it" to launch a project like ToonSeum, Schulz says. "It sounds like Pittsburgh could be the right place."

Funding for the ToonSeum Gallery comes from The Schulz Donor Advised Fund of Community Foundation, Sonoma County; The Hilda and Freddie Fu Fund of the Pittsburgh Foundation; Reading Is Fundamental; and WOS Studios.

Special events for the ToonSeum Gallery opening this weekend include a ribbon cutting Saturday at noon. Wos will do his "Once Upon a Toon" storytelling/cartoon illustration performances and conduct a cartoon workshop. He will conduct curator's tours of the exhibit Saturday and Sunday at 4 p.m.