EXHIBITION
What’s Up, Doc? The Animation Art of Chuck Jones
Jul 19, 2014 — Jan 19, 2015
Animation director and artist Charles Martin “Chuck” Jones (1912–2002) made some of the most enduringly popular cartoons of all time. He perfected the wisecracking Bugs Bunny and the exasperated Daffy Duck, and created a host of other characters, including Pepé Le Pew, Wile E. Coyote, and the Road Runner, bringing an unparalleled talent for comic invention and a flair for creating distinctive, memorable characters to the art of film animation. In a career spanning three decades, Jones directed more than 300 animated films, and was given an Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement.
What’s Up, Doc? The Animation Art of Chuck Jones explores Jones’s creative genius, as well as the influences he drew on from the fine arts and popular culture, and the legacy of his work on the field of animation. The exhibition features 23 of Chuck Jones’s animated films, interactive experiences, and 134 original sketches and drawings, storyboards, production backgrounds, animation cels, and photographs, demonstrating how Jones and his collaborators worked together to create some of the greatest cartoons ever made. The films include such classic Warner Bros. cartoons as What’s Opera, Doc? and One Froggy Evening; the Academy Award-winning short film The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics, which expanded the boundaries of the medium with its experimental techniques; and such classic television specials as Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
The exhibition is a partnership between the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Chuck Jones Center for Creativity, and Museum of the Moving Image.
Exhibition curators: Barbara Miller, Curator of the Collection and Exhibitions, and David Schwartz, Chief Curator, Museum of the Moving Image.
What’s Up, Doc: The Animation Art of Chuck Jones at Museum of the Moving Image is the first stop in a national tour organized by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service.
Support for the exhibition at Museum of the Moving Image has been provided by Linda LeRoy Janklow, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, New York State Council on the Arts, and the Museum’s members.
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