dmwang9
Agent P's sidekick-in-training
- Joined
- Feb 18, 2007
- Messages
- 469
Yesterday afternoon, I finally got around to going to the Disney Family Museum here in San Francisco. This was an event sponsored by my college alma mater's Gay and Lesbian Alumni Association, and we got a nice introduction talk from the museum's curator, followed by the standard self-guided tour.
The museum is, in a word, awesome. It traces three stories chronologically in parallel: Walt Disney's personal life, the development of the Disney Company, and the work of both the man and the company in the entertainment industry. I did my first walk-through in about 2 hours, took a break for lunch, then went back in for a second more in-depth look at some of the galleries.
My single biggest goosebump moment was when I saw what are believed to be the earliest sketches ever of Mickey Mouse. (Can't remember all the details, but Walt and a couple of others made them while on a cross-country train journey.) There was both the original sheet of sketches on paper that was creased and torn -- these were informal sketches done on a train on a piece of notebook paper -- and then a tracing/reproduction that brought out the details. What I liked best was that the museum didn't make a huge deal out of the display. Unless you stopped and read the posted information, you'd never know what you were looking at. One of Walt Disney's famous quotes is "Remember, it all started with a mouse." Well, those sketches were where it all started.
The museum is, in a word, awesome. It traces three stories chronologically in parallel: Walt Disney's personal life, the development of the Disney Company, and the work of both the man and the company in the entertainment industry. I did my first walk-through in about 2 hours, took a break for lunch, then went back in for a second more in-depth look at some of the galleries.
My single biggest goosebump moment was when I saw what are believed to be the earliest sketches ever of Mickey Mouse. (Can't remember all the details, but Walt and a couple of others made them while on a cross-country train journey.) There was both the original sheet of sketches on paper that was creased and torn -- these were informal sketches done on a train on a piece of notebook paper -- and then a tracing/reproduction that brought out the details. What I liked best was that the museum didn't make a huge deal out of the display. Unless you stopped and read the posted information, you'd never know what you were looking at. One of Walt Disney's famous quotes is "Remember, it all started with a mouse." Well, those sketches were where it all started.
