by Bruce Guthrie
I went to Westminster, Maryland to visit the new "Icons of American Animation" exhibit which is spread over two different venues there. The exhibit opened on January 3rd and runs until March 12th.
The main portion, about 60% of the 150+ pieces, are at the
Carroll County Arts Council’s Tevis Gallery.
This gallery's largest chunk are Disney pieces (although, like the
other sections, there are Disney pieces in both galleries).
The other portion is at the
Esther Prangley Rice Gallery at McDaniel College.
The
two galleries are 0.4 miles apart and you can easily walk between
them. I parked for free at the college, visited the gallery there, and
then walked to the Council's gallery. Both exhibits are free.
Both
venues offer the free 32-page color exhibition pamphlet which includes
images of all of the pieces in the exhibit as well as some of the wall
text.
The
exhibit includes original sketches and animation cels dating back to
1914. That earliest piece is a sketch from Winsor McCay's "Gertie the Dinosaur"
which most of us keep thinking is America's first animated cartoon. In
actuality, McCay himself had earlier made "Little Nemo" (1911) and "How
a Mosquito Operates" (1912) and there were some earlier animation
experiments done earlier by others. Wikipedia bills the cartoon as "the
earliest animated film to feature a dinosaur."
Another McCay piece, a panel from his "The Sinking of the Titanic" (1918) is also included.
There
is an amazing array of pieces here. When I was walking between the
venues, I was promoting the exhibit to strangers on the street and a
Westminsterite lit up and asked if there were any pieces by Ralph Bakshi
in the show -- he especially loved "Fritz the Cat". Well, yes. There
is a cell from that as well as from Bakshi's "Wizards".
To give you an idea of some of the pieces you'll see by decade:
- 1910s: The two Winsor McCay pieces.
 |
Curator Robert Lemieux
|
- 1920s: Oswald the Rabbit, Steamboat Willie, Out of the Inkwell
- 1930s:
Three Little Pigs, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Betty Boop,
Gulliver's Travels, Flowers and Trees (Disney), The Band Concert
(Disney), Porky's Duck Hunt
- 1940s: Fantasia, Pinocchio, Dumbo,
Adventures of Ichabod & Mr. Toad, Bambi, Superman (Fleisher), Bambi,
Lady and the Tramp, Sleeping Beauty, Red Hot Riding Hood (Tex Avery),
Mighty Mouse
- 1950s: Gerald McBoing-Boing, Rooty Toot Toot, Mr.
Magoo, Cinderella, Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, Huckleberry Hound,
Crusader Rabbit, Rocky & Bullwinkle, 101 Dalmatians, Tom and Jerry,
What's Opera Doc, Road Runner Show
- 1960s: The Jungle Book, The
Jetsons, The Flintstones, Jonny Quest, Space Ghost, The Pink Panther,
Charlie Brown, George of the Jungle, Droopy
- 1970s: The Aristocats, Scooby Doo, Yogi Bear, Wizards, Fritz the Cat, Horton Hears a Who, The Phantom Tollbooth
- 1980s:
Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Little Mermaid, The Smurfs, Secret of
NIMH, An American Tail, The Land Before Time, The Simpsons
- 1990s: Aladdin, The Lion King, Tarzan, Mulan, Rugrats, Toy Story 2, Nightmare Before Christmas, The Ren & Stimpy Show
- 2000s: Shrek
Obviously,
as cartoons increasingly became computer-generated, you're not going to
see original cels so the latter years are mostly represented by
concept art or storyboards. The latest piece, for example, was a city
design painting from "Shrek" (2001). One of the pieces (a model sheet)
was a lithograph but everything else was original.
Since there are two venues, you'll want to
time your visit so you can see both of them in the same trip. Of course
the venues have different hours but here's a combined schedule -- don't
go on Wednesday or Sunday!:
- Monday: Rice 10-4pm, Council 10-4pm
- Tuesday: Rice 10-4pm, Council noon-7pm
- Wednesday: Rice 10-4pm, Council ---
- Thursday: Rice 10-4pm, Council noon-7pm
- Friday: Rice 10-4pm, Council 10-4pm
- Saturday: Rice noon-5pm, Council 10-4pm
- Sunday: Rice ---, Council ---
The exhibit's official home page is
https://iconsofanimation.com/ The news release about the exhibit:
https://www.mcdaniel.edu/news/major-exhibition-curated-communication-professor-highlights-artistic-and-cultural-significanceI
of course did my normal photo obsessive thing, spending about 90
minutes at each venue and some of my photos are below. My pages for the
exhibit:
Both venues
require masks but not proof of vaccination. During my visit, there were
two other people seeing the Rice exhibit and three at the Council
gallery (two of them being the same two from the Rice exhibit) so social
distancing was easy.
