In most parts of the country, New Year's Day can be cold and dreary, but in my hometown of Pasadena, California, the roses are always in bloom. The Tournament of Roses Parade was first held in 1890 by members of Pasadena's Valley Hunt Club. The club members were eager to showcase their new home's mild winter weather...
For the new year, we're introducing a series titled "What Do YOU Do?" where we'll be asking 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 month, we highlight Jessica Blake!
Christmas is the most exciting time of the year, and not just because of Santa Claus. It is a wonderful time of celebration, of expectation, filled with glorious music. In our home, the excitement began with the Nativity set, which had been carefully packed away just after New Year's Day. It was brought out and all the figures carefully removed from the cotton in which they'd been wrapped...
The Walt Disney Family Museum is filled with personal treasures from Walt’s life. These artifacts open a window into a world of a very ordinary man albeit one of the most ingenious men of his generation. The menu that we are highlighting was written in Walt’s own hand for the family's Master Housekeeper and Cook, Thelma Howard. For someone as prominent and important as Walt, you might expect extravagant items like champagne and caviar; instead, you find spam and eggs.
This holiday season, The Walt Disney Family Museum led a group of local Presidio and Bay Area museums and organizations in collecting toys in support of the Marine Corps Reserve Toys for Tots collection drive. Following in the generous shoes of Walt Disney himself, the Museum, its partners, and the Marines, collected numerous toys and books to share with less for fortunate families...
For the December Look Closer, we’ve chosen to focus on an artifact that doesn’t relate directly to Walt’s artistic or technological achievements, but has to do more with the man: Walt’s pair of downhill skis found in Gallery 3. These skis, made of metal on wood from the Swiss manufacturer Attenhofer and worn by Walt during winter vacations with his family, are a wonderful reminder of his love of sports...
As part of our "12 Days of Christmas" special, we asked Disney historian, Paula Sigman Lowery, to tell us about Holidayland!
When we look at the “Disneyland of Walt’s Imagination”—the wonderful model showcased at The Walt Disney Family Museum—we are enchanted by the miniature versions of the lands Walt and his artists created: Fantasyland, Tomorrowland, Frontierland, Adventureland… plus Main Street, U.S.A. and New Orleans Square. But there’s one land that we don’t see, a land that existed for only five years: Holidayland.
In April of 2007, Michael Labrie, Lynne Phillips, and Hugh Chitwood embarked on a journey to a town outside of Chicago, IL called Ottawa. Their mission was to sort and pack one of the first donations to the Walt Disney Family Foundation. This collection would not only double the size of the already existing collection, but it would also help fill innumerable gaps in the permanent exhibition at The Walt Disney Family Museum...
A cold wind whipped through the buttes and chilled the small town of Yuba City on a wet Christmas Eve. Residents prepared for the following morning, filled with the joy of the season, but also with a watchful eye on the Feather and Yuba Rivers, swollen with winter rain. At four minutes past midnight, the emergency announcement went out and visions of sugarplums were dashed, as parents snatched sleeping children from their beds and headed for higher ground...
To this day, those words increase my heart rate. I didn’t care much for the Lawrence Welk show, but I’d routinely sit through a half hour of The Lennon Sisters to be certain not to miss a minute of what was to come. Once Tinkerbell appeared over the Disneyland®castle, I would start the incantation: “Please be animation, please be animation, please be animation…