The Walt Disney Family Museum Blog

Our digital archivist, Lynn Zook, is on the scene at the TCM Classic Film Festival in Hollywood this week and filed this report about Wednesday's events.

Although the TCM Classic Film Festival does not officially begin until Thursday afternoon, the festival's headquarters at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel was abuzz with activity on Wednesday afternoon.

Recently, there has been a lot of information published about women at the Disney Studio, with a fascination that they were involved in more than the traditional ink and paint roles. However, there is one group of women who worked at the Disney Studio that always seem to get slighted or forgotten: the Disney secretaries.

Our Digital Archivist, Lynn Zook, worked behind-the-scenes with the staff of Turner Classic Movies to make her dream of The Walt Disney Family Museum participating in the TCM Classic Film Festival a reality. We asked Lynn to share the story.

In observance of this Easter Sunday, our consulting historian Paul F. Anderson takes a few moments to reflect on the fundamental impact of charity and generosity of spirit, and Walt's commitment to these attributes.

In recognition of the power of millions of individual actions, today's Earth Day 2011 is organized around A Billion Acts of Green®: Personal, organizational and corporate pledges to live and act sustainably. In observation of Earth Day, Disney scholar Douglas Brode offers this except from his book, From Walt to Woodstock: How Disney Created the Counterculture.

In 1962, [Rachel Carson’s] book Silent Spring belatedly brought “the basic irresponsibility of an [ever more] industrialized technological society toward the natural world” to the public’s attention...

I am so lucky! I was one of the attendees in the sold-out audience for the The Art and Flair of Mary Blair. Author and lecturer John Canemaker presented a host of drawings and film snippets of Mary’s work, strung together with a colorful palette of words. Canemaker described her work as flat and stylized and polar opposites of reality, while her painting displayed a simplicity that conjures up Grandma Moses. The other artists at the Studio didn’t like her artwork, not being able to understand why so much attention was paid to her.

The TCM Classic Film Festival is drawing near, and I for one am particularly excited about a program that The Walt Disney Family Museum is presenting there. As some of you know, the TCM Festival will be held in Hollywood from April 28-May 1. In collaboration with New York’s Museum of Modern Art, we of the WDFM are presenting a program of the very earliest animated cartoons in Walt Disney’s career—some of them “lost” films that today’s Disney fans have never seen before...

Each month, we ask a museum staff member to answer five questions about their position at The Walt Disney Family Museum, their fondest Disney memories, and personal tidbits. This is the fourth in our series titled "What Do YOU Do?" and in honor of Tax Day, we're highlighting Renalyn Tan.

You can't talk about Walt Disney's Alice in Wonderland without acknowledging the contributions of artist, Mary Blair. We asked Michael Labrie, Director of Collections, to share with us the story of the acquisition of the Mary Blair collection.

We are saddened to note the passing of Collin Campbell, who died in Florida on April 2. He was a layout and background artist in the Disney Animation Department, and was a long-time art director and concept artist for Walt Disney Imagineering.