Pioneering Tattoo Artist Charlie “Good Time Charlie” Cartwright Rallies To Create The First National Tattoo Art Museum In California

By Sidra Lackey

“Long Beach could soon be the place to go to learn everything about the body art form with the opening of the country’s first National Tattoo Art Museum,” Press-Telegram reports in “Tattooers rally to establish the country’s first National Tattoo Art Museum in Long Beach.” 

Charlie “Good Time Charlie” Cartwright is considered the founder of the fine line movement in the tattoo industry. In the 1970’s, Cartwright with top tattoo artist Jack Rudy, opened up the tattoo shop Goodtime Charlie’s in Los Angeles. It was the first professional tattoo shop that focused on the use of the single needle – mainly using black ink – with the focus on custom designs. In 2023, Cartwright is the tattoo artist leading the way yet again, with trying to establish a national tattoo art museum. “I’ve never understood why we don’t have a national museum,” Cartwright told Press-Telegram. “Look at the popularity of tattooing,” he further explained. “It’s exploded into a phenomenon now where you hardly see anyone without a tattoo. I think we deserve it. We really want to have it be a worldwide destination and a first class operation.”

Last year, Cartwright (who is now 82 years old), joined forces with other well-known tattoo artists including Corey Miller, who has appeared on reality shows like “LA Ink,” Long Beach tattoo icon Kari Barba and other artists to form the Tattoo Heritage Project in order to raise funds to build the museum, Press-Telegram reports. “We’re trying to get the ball rolling and this fundraiser is going to be a pretty monumental event for the project,” Cartwright said. 

The tattoo museum project is in the very early stages and there is no timeline on an opening day or a physical location set yet, but according to the Heritage Project, plans call for an 8,000-5,000-square-foot facility that would attract about 250,000 visitors annually. The museum would cover, “the gamut of tattoo history, dating back to earliest known tattoos from approximately 5,000 years ago,” Press-Telegram further reports. “We want to have exhibits exhibiting everything from Indigenous people tattooing on up to the modern day,” Cartwright detailed to the newspaper.

“I feel the history of tattoo is just as important as the history of anything because it’s our past and drives us forward as to what we can do in the future,” Barba told Press-Telegram, who owns Outer Limit Tattoos in Long Beach, which opened in 1927 and is the longest continuously running tattoo shop in the country. She says on the tattoo project, “It would be something like a Natural History Museum, basically of tattoos.” Cartwright envisions a, “venue displaying artwork from tattoo artists, artifacts, traveling collections, historical documents and even guest artists from around the world tattooing people inside the museum.” 

Project officials hope to eventually raise an initial $2 million to help secure a location for the museum, and Long Beach is the logical place for the venue due to the city’s important role in the development of the art form, the tattoo artists noted to Press-Telegram. Long Beach, California is, “where the colorful American traditional style of tattooing was born in the early 1900s at the Pike, an amusement park that was home to about a dozen tattoo shops where local tattoo pioneers like Cartwright earned their stripes. The shops were kept busy thanks to the sailors who docked at the nearby ports and wanted to mark their journeys in ink with images that included ships, anchors, birds and compasses,” Press-Telegram explains.

“The majority of people are either tattooed or they know someone who is tattooed and are interested in the history of how it started, where traditional tattoos came from and things like that,” Barba concluded to Press-Telegram.

The National Tattoo Art Museum fundraiser will be held in Long Beach on Saturday, Nov. 5 with “an art show organized by the Sullen Clothing company that’s made up of about 200 pieces of original artwork, including a few by well known tattooers as well as mixed-media artists and others.”

To get updates on the status of The National Tatoo Art Museum fundraiser and the amazing, long overdue tattoo project, follow their Instagram @tattoo_heritage_project/

Tattoo collectors and tattoo artists, what are your thoughts on this national tattoo art museum in the making? Are you excited?