Pictures at an Exhibition

The film was commissioned by conductor Michael Tilson Thomas and the New World Symphony for the January 2011 opening of Frank Gehry’s New World Center in Miami Beach. It was conceived as a five-screen visual journey through Mussorgsky’s score and premiered live with Tilson Thomas conducting the New World Symphony.

The animation was created at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts. Faculty artists Michael Patterson and Candace Reckinger directed and produced the project with 13 students and alumni, developing the movements in teams from Mussorgsky’s music and the surviving ideas behind Viktor Hartmann’s pictures.

In performance, the film is powered by Ion Concert Media’s Muséik technology. Rather than asking the musicians to follow a fixed click track, a Muséik operator sits within the ensemble, follows the conductor and adjusts the visual cues in real time. The result keeps picture and music together while allowing every performance to breathe naturally.

Thirteen years after the Miami premiere, the Fairey Band’s brass setting brought the film to Europe for the first time. The 2024 Perth performance paired the visuals with Elgar Howarth’s brass-band arrangement before further performances in Durham and elsewhere in the UK.