During your next visit to The Walt Disney Family Museum, I invite you to the lower lobby to see the new case installed just a few days ago. The case is filled with treasures from Mary Blair who, according to some historians, was Walt Disney’s favorite artist! She provided concept art for Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, and Peter Pan, among other feature-length animated films and shorts.
This exhibit consists of Mary Blair’s paint stand filled with art supplies and tools which belonged to her, an enlarged photograph of Mary in her studio, and some of her eyeglasses, all of which were a gift to the Walt Disney Family Foundation from her family by nieces Jeanne Chamberlain and Maggie Richardson (two of my favorites!)
There is a hard hat, with decorations inspired by Mary Blair’s art and designs, created and given to her by fellow artists at WED (later called Walt Disney Imagineering) during the building of the model for "It’s a Small World". There also is a portrait of her drawn by Jack Miller, who traveled with Walt, Mary Blair, and others on the 1941 Good Neighbor tour to Latin America. In the photograph you can see our preparators, Ben Peters and Issey Honton, discussing and installing the artifacts.
The floor in this lobby, designed by the Rockwell Group, was inspired by Blair's designs for "It's a Small World".
This location in the museum provides us a “stage” to continue to share our admiration and appreciation of Mary Blair and highlight more of her images and works in our collection.