LIFESTYLE cargoshippingtimes 11/25/2025 0 Comments

Rare artwork by Disneyland artists revealed in new exhibit

The Walt Disney Company likes to revive Walt Disney’s famous quote that an empire was “started by a mouse.” But when it comes to Disneyland, its SoCal-run theme park, fans and history buffs want details.

A new exhibit at the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco aims to chart the beginnings and early evolution of the Anaheim resort, and it begins with Disney’s trip to Chicago with friend, animator and fellow trainer Ward Kimball. The Midwestern city, as many know, is Disney’s birthplace, but in 1948 he and Kimball began vacationing to the city’s railroad fair.

At the festival, they not only enjoyed locomotives, but Abraham Lincoln paintings, and expansive spaces featuring miniature recreations of frontier towns and Native American villages, elements that would eventually make their way to Disneyland. And while in Chicago, they stopped at what is now the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry, home to a turn-of-the-century street reenactment.

A colorful picture of turn-of-the-century buildings.

By the time the tour was over, Disney’s vision of Disneyland had begun to take shape. Within days of his return to Los Angeles, Disney wrote a memo that captured his ideas for what would eventually appear at Disneyland, including a train, a park, and a variety of vintage stores.

So maybe it’s more accurate to say that with Disneyland, it all started with a vacation to Chicago.

A red colored building flanked by the Golden Gate Bridge.

The museum exhibit, “A Happy Place on Earth: The Story of Disneyland,” is based on the book of the same title by animation producer Don Hahn and theme park designer-historian Christopher Merritt. Consider the museum exhibits a sort of greatest-hits companion to The Graveyard, which is an essential look at Disneyland’s history, a work that collects never-before-seen concept art and brings together many of the park’s lesser-known designers.

The exhibit and book coincide with Disneyland’s 70th anniversary. The former adds to and complements the museum’s mission to preserve Walt Disney’s legacy, portraying the park superintendent as a driver who created Disneyland with the help of creatives in Hollywood.

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Spread across two lower-level galleries, as well as including Hahn’s short film, one that focuses heavily on Chicago’s journey, the exhibition, running through May, unfolds as a kind of walk around the park. Sections are devoted to past and present Disneyland lands — the exhibit includes a destroyed “Indian Village,” an aspect of Frontierland that flourished in the 1950s and 1960s — but instead of trying to capture the park as a whole, the museum rarely zeroes in on a different concept of Disneyland.

The centerpiece of the first gallery is a rare revived Fantasyland portrait from Bruce Bushman, who created pre-opening concept art for the land inspired by Marvin Davis’ master plans. You’ll see a miniature train coaster, a miniature Ferris wheel and a circus area, complete with a giant statue of a clown towering over guests. It’s very different from the Renaissance Faire-inspired beginnings of the land and the European village look of today, but it’s also indicative of how Disneyland was not fully developed and was gradually iterated before its July 1955 opening.

Other Bushman art is on display elsewhere, most notably the Pirates of the Caribbean portrait as a wax museum. In the mid-1950s, before it was decided that a boat trip would be a boat trip, it was envisioned as a walk-through experience with indoor shops and a large battle scene. Hahn, who served as the exhibit’s curator, noted on a tour of the museum’s artifacts that Bushman worked on around the “Mickey Mouse Club” that he also drew up plans for Disneyland.

A museum wall with framed pictures of clothes.

“There are remnants of what the Riders created,” Han says, pointing to images of tunnels and sandbars on the map that hold hidden loot. “There are fights, and you have to cross a rickety bridge in a swamp with maybe birds. This picture, in particular, is really special to see the original white pencil drawing. Again, Bruce Bushman, here’s a guy who does Mickey Mouse Clubhouse sets, but he also does deep things.”

Ahead, the exhibit pays special attention to Southern California landscape architect Ruth Schellhorn. She was hired just four months before the park opened but is known for cleaning up its pedestrian flow and creating gardens that ease the transition between Disneyland’s central hub and its grounds.

“We built the park as we went along,” says a Schellhorn quote used in the book and exhibit and taken from the Schellhorn archive at UCLA’s library. “I doubt if this procedure would have been successfully followed in any other project on Earth; but this was Disneyland, a sort of Fairyland, and Walt’s belief that the impossible was the simple order of the day, so instilled in everyone that spirit that they never stopped to think it couldn’t be done.”

Costume designer Renee Connelly, who worked on such films as “The Big Fisherman” and “Cleopatra,” is also featured. Her work is shown in park front, main street areas, and is Victorian, streamlined and just a little bit whimsical. Yellow and white dresses, for example, feel full of movement, equally suitable for a tea party or a dance.

A key part of the book and exhibit, Hahn says, was the hope to focus on some of Disneyland’s most important contributors who might not be household names to park fans. “Let’s tell this human story,” Han says. “All the crazy people who worked on it in an incredibly short amount of time. It fascinated me.”

A group of people is half of the Disneyland castle

There’s also artwork for lost concepts, such as the never-built Chinese restaurant with robotic hosts that was envisioned for Main Street, as well as alternate visions for an early Earth. Some of the early designs for “It’s a Small World” by beloved animator-turned-theme park designer Mark Davis are on display. This was before the decision was made to prepare the ride in the form and tone of the artist Mary Blair, and Davis’s small ideas are very good – for example, a London cartoon, instead of a children’s playground.

A small wooden cart with a fortune telling inspired design in a display case.

Also rare: a miniature model of the Vagabond carriage from Rolly Crump, who worked on The Haunted Mansion, The Magic Tiki Room, and It’s a Small World, among other projects. Crump is responsible for the charming front of It’s a Small World, for example. The car, with its mystical, fortune-telling-inspired designs, was built for the Museum of the Weird, which stood next to the Haunted Mansion. Crump’s son Chris says it may be the only surviving design from the project.

Taken as a whole, the exhibit shows not only the beginnings of Disneyland, but how the park became an ever-evolving art project.

“It’s important,” Hahn says, when asked about his thoughts on why Disneyland not only continues, but remains a pilgrimage for many. Theme parks allow us to explore stories and fairy tales in a multidimensional space—an escape, yes, but also a reflection of the narratives that define culture. And Hahn adds, it’s a source of revitalization. “It’s not just kid stuff,” he says. “It’s important for our mental health.”

When you go to Disneyland, Hahn says, “You don’t think about your gas bill or your child’s education or how you can’t live paycheck to paycheck. It’s not cheap, it’s not a cheap day. But we still go because our hope is to get something there that we can’t get in everyday life. For me, it’s our ability to rebuild our heads and rebuild humanity. In the meantime.”

https://www.latimes.com/