How do you celebrate the centenary of the second biggest media company on the planet? This October marks 100 years since Walt Disney founded his eponymous film studio and began producing silent shorts known as the Alice Comedies. Though the mouse who needs no introduction was not created until 1928, Disney is capitalising on the anniversary of the far less recognisable Alice with a concert, a merchandise collection and an ambiguous-sounding “multi-sensory friendship experience” for over-18s. The jewel in Prince Charming’s crown, however, is a touring exhibition which opened in Philadelphia in February, came to Munich in April and is arriving at the Excel in London in the October, with tickets going on sale on 18 July.
Disney100: The Exhibition is made up of 10 galleries, organised not chronologically but thematically: in one you can learn about music, and another is all about theme parks. Guests can see hundreds of props and costumes as well as play with interactive installations – press this button to hear Moana sing in Hebrew! Pull this lever to play a different underwater Disney scene!
How exactly do you summarise everything the company has done in a century? When Disney archivist Becky Cline began working on the exhibition five years ago, she knew exactly where to start: resurrecting Walt.
“I always had this dream of having Walt Disney host the exhibition,” says Cline, who has worked for Disney for 34 years. Keen to have Walt himself greet punters and undeterred by his 56 years dead, Cline worked with visual effects company Industrial Light & Magic to create “something that had not been done before”: Disney MagicStage.
Half-hologram, half a strange sort of layered cinema screen, 3D Walt appears lifesize before exhibition-goers in a cloud of fairy dust. Regrettably, this isn’t the level of tech seen when Kanye West arranged for Kim Kardashian to have a holographic visit from her dead father, and the “ooh” factor is missing as Walt tells visitors, “There’s a lot of satisfaction in developing ideas into reality.” His speech is a combination of two historical audio recordings and his body is made from AI-enhanced footage from the 1960s. When Cline saw the results for the first time: “I got goosebumps.”
Outside the exhibition hall, however, the Walt Disney Company is having a bumpy birthday. In February, chief executive Bob Iger announced 7,000 layoffs after a net loss of 2.4 million subscribers to streaming platform Disney+. In May, Disney paused production on various shows due to writers’ strikes. Last Thursday, on the eve of the actors’ strike, Iger described it as “disturbing”, remarks which Fran Drescher, president of actors’ union Sag-Aftra, described as “repugnant and tone deaf”. Disney is also suing Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who is trying to seize control of the company’s self-governing district near Orlando after former Disney executive Bob Chapek criticised the governor’s anti-LGBTQ+ legislation.
Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that Disney100: The Exhibition is aggressively apolitical. According to exhibition producer Christoph Scholz, it took a while to convince Disney that Bavaria’s minister-president, Markus Söder, who enjoys posting pictures of his Star Trek mugs on Instagram and once dressed up as Shrek, should give a speech at the launch in Munich. Disney eventually relented and Söder got down on one knee when he met Minnie Mouse.
German celebrities and members of the official Disney fanclub were present when the Munich exhibition opened in April. A silver confetti cannon exploded over Mickey and Minnie mascots who wore special silver and purple centenary outfits. Fan Sarie Moscato said she paid about $120 (£95) to attend the opening – the 31-year-old from California dressed as Snow White for the occasion, donning a blue puff-sleeved top, yellow floral skirt and red headband (plus socks featuring characters from 1970’s The Aristocats). She admitted that she had no idea what to expect inside the exhibition, but was certain that it would be worth the journey and the price.
After meeting half-holographic Walt, guests are ushered into a theatre-themed room dedicated to the founder’s first years in showbusiness. The history ends here, however, as fans pass through to exhibition rooms with loose themes such as The Illusion of Life and The Spirit of Adventure and Discovery. It’s thrilling to see the titular bedknob from 1971’s Bedknobs and Broomsticks, but perhaps less so to see a clock that animators used as a reference when drawing 1940’s Pinocchio.
Still, familiarity breeds excitability. Grown men in suits queue to have their picture taken next to a looming Goofy statue, and I am charmed by an unassuming leather wallet in a small glass case. It’s the very same one that foley artists twisted to create the sound of the Seven Dwarfs’ squeaking shoes in 1937’s Snow White.
There’s also some novel interactive tech: the standout is a book that comes to life as you flick through it, playing Sleeping Beauty’s story on a corresponding screen. Yet after an hour’s exploration, the answer to the question “How do you summarise everything that Disney has done in a century?” seems to be, “You don’t.”
In San Francisco, the Walt Disney Family Museum has been open since 2009. The permanent exhibition doesn’t shy away from Disney’s murky history: an entire section is dedicated to the 1941 Disney animators’ strike and Walt’s angry reaction (he fired numerous employees). The museum even touches upon Walt’s anti-communist testimony at the House Un-American Activities Committee; the first biographer to get complete access to the Disney archives found that Walt was a ferocious anti-communist who frequently humiliated employees. In contrast, Cline says in her speech at Munich that Disney100 is “a look at how Walt created his own special magic”. It starts to feel like Walt-washing.
I ask Cline to explain the contrast between San Francisco’s museum and the exhibition. “Well, the Walt Disney Family Museum is a non-affiliated group,” she says. The non-profit museum was originally founded by Walt’s daughter Diane and Cline says it’s “a single subject thing” that tells Walt’s story. “We’re trying to tell not just Walt’s own story, but the history of the company since his passing,” she adds. “We are focusing on his philosophies more than anything.” These philosophies include a love of nature, storytelling and music.
Is it right for the exhibition to shy away from Disney’s dark past? Disney+ deftly acknowledges the company’s history of racism, adding a content warning before films such as Dumbo and The Jungle Book. “This program includes negative depictions and/or mistreatment of people or cultures. These stereotypes were wrong then and are wrong now,” the disclaimer reads. “Rather than remove this content, we want to acknowledge its harmful impact, learn from it and spark conversation to create a more inclusive future together.”
Nowhere is this harmful impact acknowledged in the Disney100 exhibition. “We didn’t consciously decide not to include anything controversial,” Cline says. “It’s a general story of Disney and we don’t get specific in any area. We don’t talk about many, many subjects because there isn’t the room or the ability to do it in this kind of event.” Outside the exhibition, Cline says there are numerous books and documentaries where people can be educated more deeply about Disney history.
Perhaps it wouldn’t make sense to have a gallery entitled All the Times We Were Bigoted, and Disney historian and Cline’s fellow curator Paula Sigman-Lowery argues that “What we’re doing is celebrating” – this is, after all, a birthday event. “I don’t see it as hiding anything,” Sigman-Lowery says. “We’re celebrating the best of [Disney].”
At times, the exhibition is so celebratory that it becomes boring; there’s only so many instances you can point at something and say it’s that thing from that film! Walt himself knew that engaging stories need baddies and goodies, ups and downs. There is so much odd and fascinating Disney history that it seems a shame to replace it with the red dress worn by Emma Stone in 2021’s Cruella. Why show that when you could play the 1943 anti-Nazi propaganda film Der Fuehrer’s Face, in which Donald Duck works in a German artillery factory?
The answer, Cline says, is that “We had to make sure this exhibition was appropriate for all ages and it was of interest to all cultures” – great care was taken to ensure there were “recognisable” exhibits for every generation. Perhaps this is why there is a healthy dose of Marvel and Star Wars content. But of course there were also unavoidable limitations. Historically, Disney costumes were created by third-party companies who kept them afterwards, meaning not many were saved. That’s probably why the Rock’s costume from 2021’s Jungle Cruise is showcased while there are only a few small photographs of the hilariously creepy Mickey Mouse costumes from the 1930s.
Provided parents can avoid the hand-sized €50 Mickey teddies in the gift shop, families will undoubtedly have few complaints about Disney100: The Exhibition. There isn’t much to learn but there’s plenty to see. Though I don’t manage to catch up with fan Sharie Moscato afterwards, I later see a picture of her pretending to be asleep next to a statue of Dopey – I’m certain she had fun.
The zeros in the Disney100 logo bleed together into an infinity symbol, and Cline ends her Munich speech looking forwards to “the next 100 years”. The exhibition itself ends with props from the new film Peter Pan & Wendy plus a handy poster advertising its debut on Disney+.
The Disney100 exhibition will tour the globe until 2028; hundreds of thousands of people will attend. Inside, they might not learn anything new, but they’ll probably emerge excited for the newest. “Walt Disney once said we are just getting started,” Cline says in her speech. “And he was sure right.”
• Disney100: The Exhibition opens at London Excel on 13 October
