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One of our most important jobs as Museum Educators is to help first-time visitors to The Walt Disney Family Museum understand that there is so much more to Walt Disney than what they’ve imagined—which is usually limited to Mickey Mouse, amusement parks, and cartoons...

A new audience-participation craze hit America in 2000 when the Academy Award®-winning film The Sound of Music packed theaters and concert halls with a version that had attendees wearing costumes and singing along with their favorite songs. Since then, many musical films have been given the sing-along treatment, including Walt Disney’s masterpiece, Mary Poppins.

The inspiration of and appreciation for Walt Disney knows no boundaries. The Membership at The Walt Disney Family Museum certainly reflects this diversity. Each month, we’ll introduce you to one of our Members, so you can see the varied and frequently fascinating people, who have come together to learn and experience more about the life, work, philosophies, and ideals of Walt Disney. This month, we’d like you to meet Steve Smart and Javier Barreto.

Millions of children around the world knew him as Uncle Walt, but to Chris, Joanna, Tamara, Jennifer, and Walter Miller, he was Grandpa. In honor of National Grandparents Day, The Walt Disney Family Museum hosted five of Walt Disney’s grandchildren as they reminisced not about the internationally-renowned storyteller, but about the attentive “Grandpa” who, as Tamara Miller recalled, “Appreciated and adored all of us.”

Avast there, ya bilge rats! Today marks the 16th anniversary of International Talk Like a Pirate Day, but there be tales behind the origins of that day that steer a course to our old shipmate Walt Disney, yarns that ye might not have heard!

"I was determined to diversify. I had another idea which was plaguing my brain. It was The Silly Symphonies. A series without a central character which would give me latitude to develop the animated cartoon medium." —Walt Disney

Robert Disney was a younger brother of Walt’s father, Elias. He is one of many Disney family members whose actions forever influenced Walt’s life and career...

In celebration of family month here at The Walt Disney Family Museum, we asked YOU to share your story of Walt was part of your family...

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 month, we're asking our very own Harvey Newman... what do YOU do??

“…my father had a very close brother [Robert Disney] all his life,” Roy O. Disney recalled in a 1968 interview. “His wife’s name was Margaret. We called her Maggie. She was a wonderful character with an infectious laugh, and laughed at the slightest provocation, and she was always enamored with Walt from the time he was a little fellow.”

So Dear to My Heart will be screening throughout September. As you may know, the film inspired Walt's hobby of miniature making and collecting. He built an elaborate miniature based upon the "Granny's Cabin" set of the film, beginning a pastime that ultimately led to the creation of Disneyland.

This past July, The Walt Disney Family Museum held its second annual Walt Disney Discovery Summer Camps, led by the members of our Museum Education staff. Working in teams, we developed three new camps for 2011: Artimation, Beyond the Funny Pages: Creating Comic Books, and Direct Your Own True-Life Adventure.

Although to many, working at Disney is a dream, it has also long been a real job—with all of the needs, rules, and efficiencies required by any employer. As such, more than five decades ago artist Tom Oreb supervised the creation of an elaborate handbook for Studio employees, which we take a look at today.

The Walt Disney Family Museum presents a weekly Portrait Drawing Class with the talented and inspiring figurative artist Felicia Forte. Felicia has studied at The California Art Institute and The Art Students League of New York. She is a full time artist living in San Francisco, and maintains a studio in Belmont, CA, where she also offers instruction in drawing and painting...

"School-age youngsters are capable of absorbing and retaining a tremendous amount of learning. Given the chance, they have an amazing aptitude for knowledge. We must not deny them that chance through shortages of classrooms and inadequate educational facilities. Having spent most of my life creating material for children and observing their potential, I feel convinced that a full-time education for our youth is our best investment in the future.” — Walt Disney

So Dear To My Heart was a movie that was truly dear to the heart of Walt Disney, since it re-created on film one of the most memorable times of his life, growing up on a small farm in Marceline, Missouri at the turn of the Twentieth Century.

Based on the acclaimed 1943 novel Midnight and Jeremiah by American author Sterling North, So Dear To My Heart takes place in the fictional Fulton Corners, Indiana in 1903. A young boy named Jeremiah Kincaid (portrayed by Bobby Driscoll, who had just finished filming Song of the South) adopts a mischievous black lamb named Danny (named after Dan Patch). Jeremiah struggles to earn enough money as well as train Danny so that the lamb can be entered into competition at the Pike County Fair. Of course, there are some tough challenges along the way that help Jeremiah grow as a person as well as a surprising but satisfying ending.

When Disney historian J. B. Kaufman visited The Walt Disney Family Museum recently, the Interpreter team had the pleasure of engaging him in conversation about the Disney Studio during the early 1930s. “There was a tremendous explosion of creative energy going on...