“One reason the Christmas season appeals to me is that it makes us suspend business-as-usual routine and lets our minds soar for a while.” —Walt Disney
San Francisco, November 29, 2022—The Walt Disney Family Museum is pleased to present its second annual juried community art show, Spirit of the Season: A Community Art Exhibition, open now through Sunday, March 19, 2023. This diverse selection of paintings, drawings, photographs, 3D objects, digital illustrations, and short films submitted by artists from the local Bay Area community, as well as Mexico, Canada, Germany, and the United Arab Emirates, is free to view in the museum’s Theater Gallery.
For Walt Disney, the holidays were a time to honor beloved traditions and create magical memories with his family, such as leaving sunny Los Angeles for snowier peaks, perfect for skiing and sledding. While Walt celebrated Christmas, other notable end-of-year holidays and traditions observed around the world include Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, Ōmisoka, Diwali, Las Posadas, Three Kings Day, Toji, seasonal solstices, and New Year’s. Many of these end-of-the-year celebrations find symbolic meaning in the great flora that surrounds us, with families and friends often marking this special time of year by exploring the outdoors.
For this year’s community art show, we asked artists to take inspiration from the museum’s current special exhibition, Walt Disney’s The Jungle Book: Making a Masterpiece, and create works that highlight the lush, abundant plant life in our environments.
“We’re delighted to mark the upcoming holiday season by showcasing the artistic talents of adult and teen artists from both the Bay Area and around the world,” says The Walt Disney Family Museum Executive Director, Kirsten Komoroske. “Spirit of the Season celebrates our wonderful museum community, and each of the featured artists have my utmost gratitude for generously contributing to this unique exhibition.”
This year’s installment of Spirit of the Season is the fifth in a series of community exhibitions sponsored by The Walt Disney Family Museum; the second to be displayed in person at the museum. Previous exhibitions, including The World of Tomorrow, it’s a small world, and Conserving the Magic of Our Planet were available to view in a virtual, 3D-rendered gallery space hosted on the museum’s website—a free initiative that was developed following the museum’s pandemic-related closure in March 2020.
Spirit of the Season: A Community Art Exhibition is presented in conjunction with Kaleidoscope, a retrospective of abstract work by artist Chris Miller, on display now in the museum’s adjacent Lower Lobby Gallery. A selection of Spirit of the Season artwork contributed by museum staff is also available to view. Both exhibitions are free to the public.