The Walt Disney Family Museum Blog

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.

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.

In keeping with our "Gardens of Wonderland" event this weekend, we asked Volunteer Coordinator (and avid hiker) Reed Milnes to write about the natural wonderland that surrounds The Walt Disney Family Museum in The Presidio of San Francisco.

Walt's first cartoon series in Hollywood, "The Alice Comedies," was a loose adaptation of the literary principle: a young girl finds herself transported into another world, in this case, a live-action girl into a cartoon world.

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...