Mike Glad. Photo by Jerome Muller. Courtesy of Mike Glad.

I magine a museum with an animation art collection big enough to create large exhibits on almost any topic: Disney, World War II propaganda cartoons, Russian animation art, or...the list continues. Probably the only collection of this kind in existence is not in a museum. It is a remarkable private archive in northern California known as the Glad Family Trust Collection.

A Wonderful Collection
Mike Glad, the owner of an auto muffler chain, has spent the last 20 years assembling an exceptional collection that covers the entire history of animation. He has been loaning major animation art exhibits to the Cartoon Art Museum in Boca Raton, Florida (formerly in Rye Brook, New York), the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles and other institutions. These have been large shows on a variety of topics including: Disney villains; the Gems of Disney; art from Fantasia; art from Snow White; art from the Fleischer Studio; watercolor studies for Bambi; a Bugs Bunny show; animation art from WW II; and a selection of rare cartoon posters for animated shorts and features. A Dumbo show in Florida featured storyboard art from each scene in the feature. "The Best of Soviet Animation" at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences featured rare items from the 1920s to present. "The Gems of Disney" was a pre-War selection that ranged from 1920s Alice shorts to Dumbo.

He is presently working with a museum curator on a show of material from stop-motion productions. The exhibit will contain material from several countries and some will date back to pioneers including George Pal and Lou Bunin. The show will also feature modern masters like Henry Selick.

Mike Glad got the collecting bug when he was a kid. He collected stamps, Lincoln head pennies and "a few works by obscure artists." He bought his first cels on a trip from Florida to Disneyland in 1956. He purchased three from the Disney Art Corner that were priced between $2 and $5. He tried to find more of these bargains on his next trip to Disneyland, but they were gone.

Glad thought about collecting animation art again around 1980 when he saw several Sleeping Beauty cels in a gallery window in San Diego. He didn't buy any because he couldn't see himself spending $300-400 for a cel, but he did ask his sister-in-law if there were places to buy animation art in Los Angeles. Eventually she introduced him to Collectors Bookstore and an employee named Howard Lowery. Glad's first purchase from their catalog was a cel of Sleepy from Snow White. More importantly, Howard Lowery recommended that Glad read Leonard Maltin's Of Mice and Magic (1980). Glad says he has read the book several times and it and Frank and Ollie's Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life (1981) should be basic reading for anybody thinking about collecting animation art.

Acquiring Art
Glad's vision of what an animation collection could be came to him in the early 1980s when he purchased almost 100 works from Jerome K. Muller. Muller had organized "The Moving Image," a show of 101 works that toured about 30 museums and art centers from 1980-84. When Glad purchased most of this collection he realized this was the beginnings of an archive from which other exhibits could be organized. He slowly developed his plans for the themes of exhibits and as he learned more about animation, his vision changed and grew.

An example of how his approach has matured can be seen in his collection of WW II art. At first this was a general category, but by the time he began to organize the show "Helping Win the War, the Art of Animation During WW II" for the Academy of Motion Pictures Art & Science (1992), he had enough pieces to fill five sub-categories of wartime art. His headings for the show were training films, films made to keep South and Central American countries neutral, home front films, cartoons about the war and educational films.

An even closer look gives some idea of the richness of Glad's holdings. The first wartime category includes art from training films made by the military's animation unit at "Fort Roach" in Los Angeles (the former Hal Roach Studio). This part of the collection includes finished drawings and rough sketches for Private Snafu cartoons, two Trigger Joe cel set-ups and art from films that teach how to use the Norton bombsight and other equipment. Work from films made to bolster our friendship with our neighbors south of the border includes images from The Three Caballeros, Saludos Amigos and other films. Art from home front films comes from Andy Panda's Victory Garden, Falling Hare, Red Hot Riding Hood, Rationing, The Spirit of `43 and Der Fuehrer's Face. Cartoons at war includes images from Commando Duck, Pigs on Patrol, Skytroopers, Education for Death, Victory Through Air Power and other shorts. The WW II educational film category includes art from Disney's Water: Friend or Foe and The Winged Scourge. They were films once used to teach health and hygiene.