Disney. L’arte di raccontare storie senza tempo

The National Galleries are hosting in the exhibition wing of Palazzo Barberini the exhibition Disney. The Timeless Art of Storytelling, promoted and produced by 24 ORE Cultura-Gruppo 24 ORE, curated by the Walt Disney Animation Research Library, with the collaboration of Federico Fiecconi, historian and critic of comics and animated films, offers a journey with a threefold key.

Telling timeless stories while succeeding in enchanting the audience is considered a true art, but behind the typical immediacy of the perfect artistic result lies years of creative research work, generally unknown to those who hear these stories.

The exhibition recounts Walt Disney’s masterpieces by tracing the stories back to the ancient matrices of epic tradition: these are the myths, medieval legends and folklore, fairy tales and fables that have constituted the narrative heritage of the world’s diverse cultures for centuries. From these traditions derive the most famous stories from which Disney films have been made, and they are presented in a narrative key through the display of creative research preparatory sketches focused on the exploration of characters, settings and narrative plots.

Indeed, the great innovative effort of Disney’s artists was-and still is-to bring these stories to the movies using various artistic tools, from hand drawing to digital animation, to capture the essence of ancient fairy tales and revitalize them, updating their universal value.

In the exhibition, the visitor will be able to trace the entire creative process behind the scenes of a Disney story and will be encouraged to become a storyteller himself, walking through the rooms of the exhibition not only as a passive spectator of content, but as a leading actor in it. Through interactive stations and a layout that evokes the settings of Disney’s great animated masterpieces, it will be the visit path itself that will provide the tools of the trade of every great storyteller. Room after room, everyone will be able to experience the basic structural elements of bringing any narrative to life until they experience the thrill of immersing themselves in the work of an animation artist through the same techniques at Disney Studios.