Emotions at Play with Pixar's Inside Out exhibit review

by Bruce Guthrie

A new interactive exhibit -- "Emotions at Play with Pixar's Inside Out" -- opened last weekend at the National Children's Museum in downtown DC.

In case you're not familiar with the museum, it's had a somewhat nomadic life.  The museum first opened in 1979 on H Street NW.  In 2004-2009, it was a "museum without walls."  In 2009-2015, it operated at National Harbor, Maryland.  It opened at its current location in the Ronald Reagan Building on February 24, 2020 just before COVID hit, after which it was forced to close for 18 months.  It's been reopened to the public since September 2, 2021.  

I had never been to the museum in any of its locations before.  My only interaction had been way back in 1988 when animation god Chuck Jones was going to be there for a gala event.  I was 31 then and had no idea what a gala was.  I called their office to ask about tickets and the person said "This is a black tie event."  I said, "That's okay.  I can buy a black tie."  She responded with, "I don't think you know what a black tie event is..."  She was right.  I wrote to Chuck saying I had wanted to see him but couldn't afford a black tie.  Unsolicited, he sent me a sketch -- "For Bruce -- Bugs Bunny in black tie -- which you may borrow for future events."

When the opportunity to see this new exhibit came up, I was happy to check it out.  

The "Emotions at Play with Pixar's Inside Out" exhibit was developed by Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh in collaboration with Pixar Animation Studios.   It features a diverse number of parts oriented around the Pixar film, "Inside Out."

In case you somehow missed the 2015 film, it focuses on the "little voices inside your head" as the central character, Riley, tries to adjust to the cacophony of emotions that result from her family being relocated.  In Riley's case, there are five emotions -- Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust -- trying to navigate Riley's long term memories and bring her back to functioning.  

The film was the seventh-highest-grossing film of 2015 and won an Oscar for Best Animated Feature.  A sequel, "Inside Out 2," is scheduled to be released in 2024.

The exhibit features a number of independent components.  Emotions, and the characters and its color palette -- yellow=joy, blue=sadness, red=anger, purple=fear, green=disgust -- tie all of them together.

From my experience, it seemed like the crowd favorite was "Emotions in Motion."  You turn a dial to select your current emotion, put a large white ball into a hole whose color now reflects your chosen emotion, and turn the crank which advances the ball.  The ball retains that color, separate from the other 100-ish balls in the system, until it makes it all the way through the serpentine circuit.

As a computer nerd, I loved that exhibit plus several other techie exhibits.
 * "Memory Sphere":  You write down a memory on a colored sheet of paper (five colors of course).  When you put that sheet into a slot, the sensors recognize the color and change a glowing ball into that color.  I never wrote anything down but was impressed at how the paper-reader-ball interacted.
 * "Range of Emotions": You sit in a chair and look at a mirror.  As you change your facial expression, a hidden camera reads your face and guesses what emotion(s) it's showing.  Five differently-colored tubes below the mirror indicate what emotional mix it's detecting.

I also enjoyed "Imagination Land" which has spinners where you watch various bits spin around in their patterns.  It wasn't at all high-tech, but I found the sights and sounds of it mesmerizing.

As an animation geek, I enjoyed "Designing the Mind World" which had reproductions of some of the 20,000+ drawings and paintings created during the visual development of "Inside Out."

I wasn't personally excited by the other areas but that's just personal taste -- kids and adults were playing at all of them:
 * "Control Panel" -- A sound console where you're asked to create sounds that reflect emotions.  This one was quite popular.
 * "Dream Productions" -- A mini-stage area to create and act out skits with stick characters and stick props
 * "Emotion Mirrors" -- Five mirrors which change as you come near them.
 * "Train of Thought" -- You maneuver your ball (train) down a slat, trying to keep the ball from falling off.
 * "Managing Our Emotions Maze" -- a console maze where people are encouraged to work together to get their ball in the desired emotional basket.
 * "Emotion Blocks" -- A section with emotion-shaped blocks where you try to balance them on a crescent-shaped rocking piece.  

In most cases, working with someone improves the experience so teamwork and parent-child cooperation is a plus.  People can also do them solo if desired.

All signage was in both English and Spanish and in most cases the languages were given equal billing.  Typically, one side of a sign was in English, the other Spanish.  

The exhibit is really well built and battle tested.  It debuted at the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh (Fall 2021) then moved to the Museum of Science in Boston (Spring 2022), DiscoveryCube in Los Angeles (Summer 2022), and it's here in DC until January 8, 2023. 

The exhibit is included with the regular National Children's Museum entry fee.  Their website is https://nationalchildrensmuseum.org/ More photographs can be seen here.

 

 

Moomin Exhibit at National Children’s Museum

 by Mike Rhode

Moomin Animations – Thrills and Cuddles, Minna Honkasalo, curator. Washington D.C.: National Children’s Museum on September 3, 2021-January 9, 2022. https://nationalchildrensmuseum.org/

In 1945, Finnish writer and illustrator Tove Jansson created her Mumintrolls for a children's book. The Moomins look like hippos crossed with the Pillsbury doughboy, but have proved popular enough to make her the Scandinavian equivalent of Walt Disney. She eventually wrote or drew 9 books about them. In 1947 she started a comic strip with the characters, which started appearing in English in 1954. Her brother Lars Jannson joined her on the strip from 1959-1961 and then he took the strip over until 1975 when it ended. Reprints have been published by Canada's Drawn & Quarterly. There have been multiple animated versions of her characters, and that is what this exhibit focused on.

The NCM has had some rough years, closing off and on while searching for new locations. In 2020, it finally wound up just off Pennsylvania Ave, NW in a plaza behind the Reagan building. They had to shut again almost immediately due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but reopened in September 2021 with the Moomin exhibit among others, and are aiming for an attendance of a half million people per year. Note that you have to visit with a child; unaccompanied visitors need to make an appointment, and throughout my tour of the exhibit, I was accompanied by a staff member. The museum is actually largely underground; one enters at ground level and then moves downward through an unfinished concrete warren. The guide is probably necessary for more than the main reason.

The Embassy of Finland has brought over a version of Honkasalo's original exhibit from the Moomin Museum that is completely composed of reproductions. It has several sections - a wall on Jansson's life, stills from various animations, 4 screens showing cartoons, and several activity areas for children. An average American viewer might have no knowledge about the Moomins, in spite of the fact that there have been so many adaptations. This exhibit focuses on animated versions and includes episodes from 1959 (West Germany), 1969 (Japan), 1977 (Poland), 1990 (Japan). Obviously, none of these would be particularly easy for an Anglophone to find, but the 1969 one in particular was surpressed by Jansson, as noted in the exhibit catalog - "She felt that Momin was too far removed from her stories' world and atmosphere. Elements foreign to Moominvalley had been inserted into the tales, including cars, money and weapons. For example, a few episodes show Snork driving around in a car, Moomintroll makes money by busking, and weapons feature in several episodes." "She did not want them to reach international distribution, so they have never been broadcast outside Japan. Today, they are hard to find even in Japan, on account of complicated copyright issues connected with the [1900s series]." The exhibit catalog is unfortunately not available, except for a few copies lying in the exhibit, but I recommend it highly if you can find it.

Jansson has been the focus of recent attention including a documentary, two biographies, and an edition of her letters. The wall on her life is written for children, but includes the basics necessary to have an idea about her as a person and as a creator. To the exhibit's credit, the segment on her life does not shy away from her love of another woman, even though it was socially unacceptable at the time. "A soul mate. Amid the hustle and buslte, Tove meets Tuulikki, the woman who will become her life partner for the rest of her life..." reads part of the panel.

The wall of stills would probably have been of more interest in the original exhibit, as it apparently included some actual artwork by her. Here, understandably, it's all reproductions and screen captures. A fan of the characters might be interested in seeing how they evolved in different animations. There are also some areas for children to draw, hang things on a tree, or take a picture with cardboard standups. There is also a small selection of gifts in the giftshop.

Also of interest from a cartoon perspective are a STEAM-centric exhibits about creating animations featuring SpongeBob and his cast, and another on Paw Patrol. Lastly, I'd like to apologize to the public affairs staff at the Museum for being so delayed in posting this review. They were true professionals who got me into the exhibit days after I wrote to them, and I just didn't get around to writing it for 6 weeks.

All the images, except for "Exhibition space 4" and "Tove Jansson," are courtesy of the Embassy of Finland in Washington, D.C. The two are courtesy of the NCM. The exhibit catalog cover is taken from the copy the staff gave to me. My photographs can be seen here. A version of this review will also appear in the International Journal of Comic Art and on its blog.