Long-Term Show on Prolific Animator Chuck Jones at the Museum of the Moving Image

He could draw a wisecracking Bugs Bunny, an exasperated Daffy Duck, an enamored Pepé Le Pew, and a sinister Wile E. Coyote. Over a three-decade career, artist Charles Martin “Chuck” Jones (1912–2002) made some of the most popular cartoons of all time while directing more than 300 animated films. This Saturday, the Museum of Moving Image will open What’s Up, Doc? The Animation Art of Chuck Jones, an exhibition that will run through January 19th, 2015. The first stop in a national tour organized by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, the show will feature 23 of Jones’s animated films, interactive experiences, and more than 125 original sketches and drawings, storyboards, production backgrounds, animation cels, and photographs. The films include classic Warner Bros. cartoons such as What’s Opera, Doc? and classic TV specials such as Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

For the duration of the show, the museum will present Chuck Jones Matinees, cartoon screenings every Saturday and Sunday at 1 pm The museum will also host Animation Takeover in the Drop-In Moving Image Studio. Working with museum educators and using pencils, crayons, cameras, computers, and tablets, children will make their own media projects inspired by the exhibition.

More details and five additional images are on the jump page.

Details: What’s Up, Doc? The Animation Art of Chuck Jones, Museum of the Moving Image, 36-01 35th Avenue, Astoria, July 19th, 2014 through January 19, 2015, free with admission.

Chuck Jones in action.

Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner.

Daffy Duck.

Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd.

Chuck Jones at work.

Photos: Museum of the Moving Image