Museum Of The Moving Image To Host Fleischer Studios Gallery Installations, Cartoon Screenings, And Animator Discussions

This summer, New York’s Museum of the Moving Image (MoMI) will invite visitors to step back into the golden age of animation through the newly restored works of Fleischer Studios. Best known for showcasing iconic characters like Superman, Popeye, Betty Boop, and Koko the Clown, Fleischer Studios’ groundbreaking cartoons from the 1920s to the 1940s will come to life once again through gallery installations and a special live screening event.

MoMI’s tribute to the legendary animation studio starts on July 10 with Superman! Restored Animated Classics from the 1940s, a rotating program in Tut’s Fever Movie Palace. The gallery installation includes five Superman shorts – Mechanical Monsters (1941), The Bulleteers (1942), The Arctic Giant (1942), Terror on the Midway (1942), and Billion Dollar Limited (1942) – originally shown in theaters, along with a new documentary, The Superman Story by Ray Pointer, on the character’s animated history.

On Saturday, July 12, MoMI will present Out of the Inkwell: The Silent Cartoons of Max Fleischer, a live event celebrating the studio’s earliest and most innovative work. Featuring live piano accompaniment by Charlie Judkins, the screening will showcase restored silent-era classics from the studio’s “Out of the Inkwell” series. The event will also include a panel discussion with contemporary animators Aaron Augenblick, Stephen DeStefano, Mark Newgarden, and J. J. Sedelmaier, who will explore the Fleischer legacy. The program will be introduced by Skyler Reid, Max Fleischer’s great-grandson.

Later this summer, starting August 1, the Museum will unveil Fleischer Studios Cartoons – Restored! in the Jane Henson Amphitheater. This presentation features a looped program of Technicolor shorts, including Betty Boo’s debut cartoon Dizzy Dishes (1930), Somewhere in Dreamland (1936), and Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor (1936). These films showcase the Fleischers’ use of the revolutionary Stereoptical process, which created striking three-dimensional effects decades before the advent of CGI.

The exhibition comes on the heels of an ambitious restoration initiative launched in 2022 by Max Fleischer’s granddaughter, Jane Fleischer Reid. Of the studio’s nearly 700 films, over 100 have already been restored.