Disney's California Adventure: The Art of Snow White

Disney's California Adventure has a fascinating new exhibit, The Art of Snow White, in the Animation Building. We visited last Friday as part of our day at Disneyland.


The exhibit contains original sketches and cels from the production of the first full-length animated movie. 90 percent of the exhibit pieces had been in the hands of a private collector, who recently sold his collection to Disney. Details on the exhibit can be found in the article at the subject link, as well as in this thread at Mice Chat.

The photos below had to be taken without a flash, but hopefully they help convey the historic nature of the items on display. Click to enlarge the photos.

The exhibit entrance:


The Animation Building normally displays artwork from various Disney cartoons on huge screens which surround the entire room near the ceiling. In keeping with the theme of the display, currently the screens feature only Snow White sketches:


An exhibit wall:


A closeup of a sketch of Snow White:


A closeup of a sketch of the wishing well:


A closeup of sketches from the final scene:


The above sketches are part of the Happily Ever After wall:


More info on the exhibit is here. The artists' notes on the sketches, which are mentioned in the article, were fascinating.

It was surprising to realize that Disney had not preserved all of the above items, but doubtless they simply weren't seen as very valuable at the time they were created. How wonderful that someone took the time to carefully put together such a collection and then return it to Disney, so that it can be enjoyed by the public as well as preserved for the long term.

The exhibit will be open through sometime in April.

As a footnote, the new Toy Story Zoetrope, which is also in the Animation Building, was absolutely fascinating, but I had to stop watching it after a while -- the spinning table and strobe lights used to create the illusion of movement made me dizzy.