WPBF News: Boca Raton Museum of Art to open 'Art of the Hollywood Backdrop' exhibit

22 canvasses from iconic films, including "The Sound of Music," "North by Northwest" and "Singin' in the Rain" will be featured

BOCA RATON, Fla. —

This is the opportunity for you to see some of your favorite childhood movies come to life.

The Boca Raton Museum of Art is hosting the "Art of the Hollywood Backdrop: Cinema's Creative Legacy" from April 20 to Jan. 22, 2023.

"Twenty-two fabulous backdrops made by artists who never got any screen credit. So this exhibition celebrates the unheralded artists who were masters of illusion and created these mammoth canvasses for movies such as the 'Sound of Music,'" Irvin Lippman, the executive director of Boca Raton Museum of Art, told WPBF 25 News.

And some other art pieces from films include "North by Northwest" and "Singin' in the Rain."

"This is the first time that they’ve ever been on view and the first time that we’ve really celebrated the men behind making these. And that is really what this exhibition celebrates, it’s just a fabulous opportunity to go back in time from 1938 to the mid-60s when before the digital age when backdrops were actually hand painted by these studio artists in Los Angeles primarily for MGM," Lippman said.

"The art of the art was not to notice the art. If that makes any sense. I mean, it was all a part of completing a complete world. So if you see the art, that means it’s not working well. The whole idea was to create art that the camera would think was real." Thomas A. Walsh, the co-curator with Karen L. Maness of the Art of the Hollywood Backdrop, told WPBF 25 News.

Visitors can also follow in Donald O'Connor's footsteps in "Singin' in the Rain."

"We’ve been able to recreate a moment where people can have their photograph, we have clips from the film and then they can actually go and sit on the sofa," Walsh said.

Twenty of the backdrops in the exhibit are from the University of Texas, Austin's collection, while two of them have been obtained from the Academy of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles.

"We’re pulling, opening the door on wonderful pieces of art culture from the cinema," Walsh said.

For more information on the Boca Raton Museum of Art, click here.