Last November, Disney released Epic Mickey, a Wii video game where Mickey Mouse tries to help bring his long lost brother Oswald the Lucky Rabbit back from the dark side. We were fortunate enough to be able to sit down with video game producer—and fellow Disney buff!—Warren Spector, to chat with him about the game and what it was like to bring these monumental characters to life in a game...
Join us this March for Mary Poppins-themed screenings, activities and fun! A full schedule of events can be found below. Tickets are available at www.waltdisney.org. Hope to see you here!
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 other personal tidbits. This is the third in our series titled "What Do YOU Do?" and this month, we're highlighting John Stroh!
Our amazing model of Disneyland was built by Kerner Optical in San Rafael, California, a former division of George Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic. It was completed and installed in Gallery 9 before the completion of the reading rail.
The original installation of the rail was very tricky and time-consuming; it was a striking thing, winding down the length of the ramp, bright peacock blue, and full of information...
We asked Martin Salazar, our Art Conservator, to pick his favorite artifact from our Collection and write about why he chose it. He chose a unique artifact from the the movie Fantasia.
Throughout the month of March, The Walt Disney Family Museum is showing Walt Disney's classic film Mary Poppins. In celebration of this beloved movie, the Museum hosted an extraordinary afternoon with the film's costume and design consultant, Tony Walton. Brad Rosenstein, curator of the San Francisco Museum of Performance and Design, moderated the discussion on Tony's life and work. The conversation focused on Tony's designs for Mary Poppins, his firsthand experiences working with Walt, and a few behind-the-scenes secrets of the film...
Ever since I began working for the Museum in September 2009 and learned that we’d be offering a Film of the Month for our guests, I anxiously awaited the showing of Mary Poppins. It had always been my favorite Disney feature-length film, and when it was finally scheduled to run this month, I was thrilled. Not only did I have the chance to watch it again in our intimate Fantasia-themed theater, I also had the pleasure of introducing it to visitors throughout the month, and then making the book behind the movie the focus of our March Look Closer presentation...
New to Gallery 7 within The Walt Disney Family Museum is an enlarged display of the Museum’s tiny treasures, including several pieces of Walt’s unique collection, mentioned in this excerpt from Jim Korkis’s book, The Vault of Walt.
Often lost in the public perception of Walt Disney’s personality is his wicked sense of humor. He has frequently been characterized as simply a lowbrow, fond of barnyard humor and gags involving the rear end. Although Walt admitted, “I can’t laugh at intellectual humor, you know? I want to be hit here. I’m just corny enough. I want to be hit right here in the heart...
English poet Alfred Austin said, “Show me your garden and I shall tell you what you are.” Our Consulting Historian Paula Sigman Lowery has turned the earth in the Disney garden, and her discoveries are pleasant revelations of Walt’s life at home.
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.
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.
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...
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...
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.
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.
Our digital archivist, Lynn Zook, is on the scene at the TCM Classic Film Festival in Hollywood this week, and filed this report.
It was a grand opening night in Hollywood for the second annual TCM Classic Film Festival!
More than 2,500 film buffs from around the world arrived to spend the next few days immersed in what can only be described as classic film heaven...