Monday Mouse Watch: MoMA’s Tim Burton exhibition gets ready to go down under

Jim Hill

15 years ago

In response to Friday’s “Panel discussion? Product signing? Rarities screening? Which would you choose?” article, ToadinaWhole wrote:

“Let me turn this question around you: Which would you choose?”

Well, this past Friday afternoon, what Nancy and I chose to do is spend 4½ hours in the car. We traded the woods of New Hampshire for the canyons of Manhattan just so I could then see the Museum of Modern Art’s Tim
Burton exhibition before it closed on Monday night.

As it turns out, we should have our homework prior to making this special trip down to the City. Yes, Nancy and I knew — per the info on the MoMa website — that ” … gallery space is limited and timed tickets are required” in order to see the Museum’s Tim Burton exhibition. But what we hadn’t counted on was Target Free Fridays.

You see, MoMA has this program ( which is underwritten — obviously — by Target) which gives the public free admission to the Museum starting at 4 p.m. on Friday afternoons. Which meant that — Nancy and I walked in the door at 4:30 p.m. this past Friday — the place was already packed.

And the crowds just got worse as we made our way up to the Special Exhibitions Gallery on the third floor (which is where the bulk of the 716 pieces of framed art, objects, and media featured in the Tim Burton exhibition were kept). At the exhibit’s rather-tight entry point, MoMA staffers were earnestly trying to maintain order and prevent too many people from crowding into this 4,450-square-foot space.

But by the time Nancy and I actually got into this East Wing gallery, that battle had pretty much already been lost. There were so many people jammed into the MoMA’s Tim Burton exhibit that the museum’s security staff was genuinely struggling to keep this mob under control. Which is why – every 30
seconds of so – you’d hear some poor beleaguered rent-a-cop bellow “Put your cell phone away!,” “No cameras!” and “Photography of any kind is not permitted in the Tim Burton exhibition!”

So – just to review here – Nancy and I had traveled 4½ hours by car only to then get crammed into this brutally hot & stuffy gallery at the MoMA. Where – in order to even get a glimpse of the art – you had to push & shove your way through a crowd, stand elbow-to-elbow with hundreds of strangers and then try not to become deafened by the museum’s security staff.

But — in the end — none of that really matter. Why For? Because the artwork that was on display at the MoMA’s Tim Burton exhibition was so entertaining, so informative, so dazzling, that the extremely difficult conditions that Nancy and I encountered at the Museum this past Friday were still worth the hassle. Seriously, if you’re an animation fan and/or a Disney history buff, you HAVE TO find a way to see this show at some point.

By that I mean: It’s only when you’re standing there, looking at the “Crush Litter” sign that the young Tim Burton drew for the Burbank Chamber of Commerce (which is how this then-17-year-old won that year’s “Beautify Burbank” contest) that you realize that this was a kid who actually grew up in the
shadow of the Mouse Factory.

Which is why it was almost inevitable that – starting in 1979 – Burton would go to work for Disney. Hired straight out of CalArts at a time when Walt Disney Animation Studios was supposedly in the process of re-inventing & re-invigorating itself. But when it came to Tim’s obvious talent for coming up with memorable story ideas and/or truly unique character
designs … The old guard at Disney just didn’t know what to do with Burton.

Which is why none of the development work that he did for “The Black Cauldron” was ever used …

Or why stand-alone projects that Tim created for Walt Disney Productions like “Little Dead Riding Hood” …

… never made it off the drawing board.

Oh, sure. There was some projects that Burton worked on during his initial 4-year stint at the Mouseworks that did finally reach fruition.

Disney’s 1982 stop-motion short, “Vincent” comes immediately to mind …

… as does the Studio’s 1984 live-action featurette, “Frankenweenie.”

But even when Mickey would allow Tim to complete a project, Studio execs still didn’t know what to do with the thing. Take – for example – that Japanese version of “Hansel & Gretel” that Burton created …

… that Mouse House managers allowed to be shown once (on the Disney Channel. On October 31, 1983 at 10:30 p.m.) before then locking this half-hour-long live-action TV special away in the Disney vaults. Never to be seen again.

In the end, Mouse House managers of the 1980s just didn’t know what to with Tim. Which is why magical if somewhat macabre projects like “Trick or Treat” …

… languished at Disney. And it wasn’t ‘til Burton left the Mouse Factory and went to work at Warner Bros., making movies like 1985’s “Pee Wee’s Big Adventure,” 1988’s “Beetlejuice” and 1989’s “Batman” that Disney execs then finally realized that they let this hugely talented filmmaker slip right through their fingers.

To be fair, Mouse House managers weren’t the only ones to ever say “No” to Tim Burton. Back in 1997, Warner Bros. actually let Burton spend a full year developing “Superman Lives!” (which was to have re-envisioned the Son of Krypton as an alien who – while he was still obviously Earth’s defender – was struggling to find a way to connect / fit in with humanity) before studio execs eventually pulled the plug on that project.

Below is one of the concept sketches that Tim did for that film’s villain, Brainiac.

And speaking of pulling the plug … Today is the very last day that the Tim Burton exhibition will be on display in New York City. But the good news that — starting tomorrow morning — MoMA staffers will begin packing up all 716 pieces. So that – eight weeks from now –
they can then be unveiled for film fans down under at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in Melbourne.

The Tim Burton exhibition will be on display at ACMI from June 24th through October 10, 2010. Once that’s done, this exhibition then moves on to Toronto, Canada where the public can tour this exhibit from November 22, 2010 through April 17, 2011 at the Bell Lightbox.

Mind you, there’s talk of other possible stops for the Tim Burton exhibition around the globe in the future. But as of right now, New York City, Melbourne and Toronto are the only cities where you’ll be certain to see all of these framed piece of art, objects, and media gathered together in one place. And if you’re an animation fan and/or a Disney history buff, even if you have to do as Nancy and I did this past Friday (i.e. deal with large crowds and ridiculously tight conditions once you actually gain entrance into the gallery space), you owe it to yourself to see the MoMA’s Tim Burton
exhibition. It really is that good.

For further information on this soon-to-be-traveling exhibition, please click on this link.