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Detroit Institute of Arts opens Watch Me Move: The Animation Show

The Detroit Institute of Arts presents Watch Me Move: The Animation Show an exhibition on view Oct. 6, 2013–Jan. 5, 2014.

Watch Me Move: The Animation Show is the most extensive animation exhibition ever mounted, featuring both iconic moments and lesser-known masterpieces from the last 150 years. Visitors will have the rare opportunity to see an incredible array of animation techniques in more than 100 animated film segments from across generations and cultures.

“Artists have been experimenting with ways to create the illusion of movement throughout history,” said Graham W.J. Beal, DIA director. “Animation as an art form offers limitless opportunities for creativity, and this exhibition illustrates how artists use the medium not just to entertain, but also to explore cultural issues and elements of the human condition.”

The exhibition includes animation’s great inventors, innovators and artists, from Georges Méliès and Chuck Jones to William Kentridge and Tim Burton, as well work from animation studios such as Walt Disney, Aardman, Studio Ghibli and Pixar.

The exhibition is divided into six interrelated chapters: Apparitions – the emergence of the animated image; Characters – animation’s ability to construct powerful, complex personalities; Fables – the use of animation to re-present existing myths and fables and invent new ones; Structures – underlying formal and conceptual structures of the medium; Fragments – animated narratives in a post-modern world; Superhumans – the exaggerated, extended character; and Visions – mapping animated worlds onto the “real” world. See more at: http://www.dia.org/calendar/exhibition.aspx?id=3655&iid=#sthash.yStuypUS.dpuf