Sendak was incredibly prolific, so more than 100 books.

And he almost invented himself anew for every project that he was working on.

He never settled on a style and it is really what shows this amazing creativity of this artist.

Sendak kept everything, every piece of paper that he ever scribbled on is part of this amazing legacy that were never seen as artworks.

They were seen as part of the process of building a book, making a book.

There is a lot of material in this show that has never been shown before.

This is from “Higglety Pigglety Pop!” And, you know, one of Maurice's favorites.

This is Jennie, a dog that he grew up with in his childhood.

It hung in his office, and he didn't show many of his own works of art.

This one - because it was exposed for decades, discolored.

Previously it looked really discolored like this, and, I was able to do a treatment to reduce all of this yellowing and discoloration.

As you can see, the paper itself is quite distorted and that's because I let it air dry following the light bleaching treatment.

The final step with this process is, humidification and flattening.

Even though I am spraying solid water onto the blotter, the Gore-Tex provides a barrier that will convert that solid water into vapor.

And what happens when paper expands with just vapor is that it's very slow and very uniform.

And you can see now that the piece is flattened.

Maurice loved Mozart, and he listened to Mozart a lot when he worked.

And I've been listening to a lot of Mozart while I've been working on the drawings.

Maurice Sendak came from Brooklyn and his family, originated from Poland.

He grew up in New York.

There's a lot of his family history that plays into his books.

There's something from “A is for Alligator” that needs a little TLC.

A tear and, tears happen with paper.

It's not unusual.

This is wheat starch paste, I'm going to brush out the paste so that it holds in place on the mylar spatula.

And then I'm going to very gently insert the spatula.

I like to smooth over with my tweezers so that I can get really good adhesion.

And that is safely mended.

The exhibition with more than 400 objects is very big, so it's just probably one of the most objects we've ever had in a show.

To coordinate all of this, to bring it together and then to matt it, to frame it, to get it on the walls is a huge logistical undertaking and we are incredibly lucky to have a fantastic team here at the Denver Art Museum.