Disney brings Pandora to the Orlando Museum of Art to show how the fine arts influence theme park experiences.
Theme-park goers often appreciate the details that go into making an attraction feel complete or real. What many fans might not pick up on is how many of those details are anchored in fine arts.
“We see a lot about the business of theme parks and the decisions that go into getting them built,” said Joe Rohde, a Walt Disney Imagineering executive, from his office in California. “But as artists, this really is an art form. And that art form has roots in the very same kinds of arts that are presented by museums in another context.”
The creative portfolio lead for Disney’s Animal Kingdom, Rohde is coming to Florida for Orlando Museum of Art’s 1st Thursday art party. This month will feature music and food inspired by Animal Kingdom’s Pandora — The World of Avatar, artwork from Disney employees and a presentation from Rohde on the role of art in theme-park creation. (Event starts at 6 p.m. Thursday. Tickets — $15 adults, $5 children — at omart.org. Rohde speaks at 7 p.m. and 8 p.m.)
Rohde, who has been with the company for 37 years, enjoys the chance to connect Orlando to a deeper view of the theme park. “[1st Thursday] seemed like an opportunity to help the community be more aware of what this art form is and to give our local artists a chance to be seen,” he said.
Art gazers should expect to see more original ideas than sketches related to the actual park’s creation. “The work reflects upon and looks at the world of nature as represented by Animal Kingdom,” said Rohde, 61. “It’s not so much a ‘making of’ presentation as it is a presentation about a group of ideas that hold Animal Kingdom together.”
“We’re all very familiar with the field research that goes into Animal Kingdom,” said Rohde. “Everybody knows the team goes all over the world photographing exotic cultures in order to bring this to life. What’s less familiar to people is the degree to which this research involves historical research into artistic precedent.”
As for his own presentation, “This is … an art history lecture about the roots of Animal Kingdom’s design and the design of Pandora in the great and timehonored traditions of art history,” Rohde said. “Those design problems that we solve today in a theme park have been solved many, many times before by other great artists across time.”
Rohde sees the importance of the concepts presented at his theme park as stretching beyond Central Florida. “The underlying ideas of Disney’s Animal Kingdom are profoundly important ideas about our place in the world of nature and the behavior we need to expect of ourselves,” he said.
“I think this is a very interesting coming together of various worlds of art: us as artists, the theme park as art and its relationship to Orlando and the community of artists within it.”