The Museum of the Moving Image (MoMI) has announced a new exhibit titled “Clayography in Motion: Adam Elliot’s Memoir of a Snail,” which will open Dec. 20 and run until March 2025.
In celebration of the 2024 animated film “Memoir of a Snail,” which has earned Golden Globe and Critics Choice Award nominations, the installation is set to feature a series of handmade puppets from the movie. These designated puppets will be presented with film excerpts, 2-D characters from “Memoir of a Snail,” and film sets where visitors can make their own stop-motion animations.
“Clayography in Motion: Adam Elliot’s Memoir of a Snail” will be part of the museum’s core exhibition, Behind the Screen.
Director Adam Elliot used clay puppets in the animated feature to embody his life’s themes. “Clayography” is a term Elliot used to describe his filmmaking work.
“Memoir of a Snail” premiered at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, winning the Cristal Award for a Feature Film. IFC Films released the movie in the U.S. on Oct. 25.
On Jan. 3 and 4, the museum will also host a special screening series in which it will play “Memoir of a Snail” in addition to Elliot’s 2009 feature “Mary and Max” as well as five short films that will include his Oscar-winning film “Harvie Krumpet.” Elliot will be attending the screening series.
In the past, the MoMI museum has featured other exhibitions celebrating animation, such as “Tim Burton: Drawings (2003),” “Gumby and the Art of Stop-Motion Animation (2005),” “The Art of Rise of the Guardians (2012),” “What’s Up, Doc? The Animation Art of Chuck Jones (2014),” “Plymptoons: Short Films and Drawings by Bill Plympton (2014),” “The World of Anomalisa (2015),” “Reimagining the Cel: Experiments in Animation from the 1980s (2019),” “D’Oh! Animating America’s Favorite Family (2020)” and more.
