Not since the Superdome premiere of The Hunchback of Notre Dame in 1996 has a Disney animated feature stirred so much excitement and anticipation in New Orleans. The Princess and the Frog, which opened at movie theaters locally on December 11, is set in New Orleans and the nearby Bayou Country and it has inspired a four-month-long exhibition of original artwork from the Walt Disney Studios at the New Orleans Museum of Art.
The NOMA exhibition, titled “Dreams Come True: Art of the Classic Fairy Tales from the Walt Disney Studio,” opened its doors November 15 and will run through March 14, 2010.
“Dreams Come True” Exhibition at the
New Orleans
Museum of Art Now Through March 14, 2010
The New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA) exhibition, “Dreams Come True: Art of the Classic Fairy Tales from the Walt Disney Studio,” features more than 600 original historic artworks related to Disney-produced animated films. Many of them date back to the 1930s when Walt Disney himself was doing much of the drawing, while simultaneously pioneering new techniques and innovations in the art of film animation. In the process, the Disney Studios shaped such legendary animated features as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast.
Visitors to the exhibition will see themed rooms showcasing artwork related to some of Disney’s most famous and popular animated features, much of which was hand-drawn long before the advent of digital computerized technology. Arranged chronologically, by year of release, the rooms will feature:
Silly Symphonies (1930s)
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
Cinderella (1950)
Sleeping Beauty (1959)
The Little Mermaid (1989)
Beauty and the Beast (1991)
The Princess and the Frog (2009)
Film clips accompany the artwork to demonstrate how individual sketches, paintings and cels led to a finished celluloid masterpiece. An adjacent Education Area highlights Disney's long association with music and also serves as a mini library for animation research and storytelling programs.
