Victorian Minister for the Arts Heidi Victoria was fit to bust with delight over the announcement that ACMI would run a major exhibition about DreamWorks Animation in its twentieth year.
Bill Damaschke, DreamWorks staffer since 1995 and now the chief creative officer, was accompanied by a small but significant production team. Wearing a jacket because he is management, but not a tie because he is creative, he explained that this is “truly one-of-a-kind, and for all of us at DreamWorks it is all a tremendous moment.”
It marks the twentieth anniversary of the company, and showcases the DreamWorks story from early traditional cell animation to the massively computerised work of today, and dismantles in detail the four year journey to make a modern animation film.
This is not a bought-in show. Instead, ACMI has originated the project itself, and is the equal lead creative and intellectual group in the relationship. It belongs to ACMI, with the generous use of DreamWorks`s wonderful visual assets.
While the launch is focused on setting the exhibition up as a tourist destination, and a key event for local families in the dreary winter months, the project is an enormous milestone for ACMI.
When it opened ten years ago, ACMI displayed a handful of individual video works commissioned from international artists. It took the Pixar exhibition from the international market, and developed enough clout to secure the Tim Burton exhibition in a rare outing from New York. They reconfigured it and added new ideas.
Meanwhile, ACMI staff were learning to mount exhibitions of their own, until they were able to offer the Game Masters exhibition to other locations. It has just finished a run in New Zealand.
Over the last two years, Bill Damaschke was coming to Melbourne to supervise the development of the arena tour of How to Train Your Dragon by The Creature Technology Company.
He went to the ACMI Game Masters exhibition. As he said in his speech, ‘What I liked the most was that it was structured for whole families to enjoy the exhibition together. I felt that the ACMI team were kindred spirits.’
Those kindred spirits proposed that ACMI would mount the DreamWorks 20th Anniversary exhibition, in association with the company.
A deal was struck, and the exhibition is being prepared for April 2014. He and his team have just spent the last week locked in detailed planning with key ACMI staff across exhibitions, marketing, design, communications, development and public programs.
This last financial year is the most successful ever for ACMI, with 1.16m visitors, which makes it the most visited of the moving image installations in the world. The Hollywood Costume exhibition has seen 155,000 visitors since April, even before the usual rush before it ends on August 18th. That exhibition is billed as “direct from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London”.
Hardened journalists were then entertained by a dancing panda, with which the Hon. Heidi Victoria posed enthusiastically for pictures. While children had snaffled all the green furry Shrek ears, your correspondent did leave with a pair of yellow plastic eyeballs.
