In the Court of Walt Disney

Abstract

C onsumed by generations of children the world over, Disney’s animated retellings of classic fairy tales have had a unique and singular impact on popular perceptions of European court culture today. Borrowing from histories that stretch back to the Middle Ages and, increasingly, cultures far beyond Europe, Disney has created a potent visual culture of royalty that is all its own— replete with an ever-growing coterie of princesses, a global empire of theme parks each crowned by its own castle and an expansive array of collectible merchandise. The Walt Disney Company, founded in  by its namesake (–) and his brother Roy (–), is indeed a Magic Kingdom. A  act of the Florida Legislature even granted Disney immunity from local regulations (including taxation) and vested the company with unique legal privileges that allow it to exercise governmental authority over the lands in and around its Orlando-area theme parks. The Mouse is sovereign. Curated by Wolf Burchard of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Inspiring Walt Disney: The Animation of French Decorative Arts was organized jointly by the Met and the Wallace Collection where it will travel before being presented at the Huntington Library. This is not the first exhibition to consider the art of Disney or the various cultural influences that have shaped it. Such exhibits have a long history that dates back to  and includes, most recently, the exhibition Once Upon a Time: Walt Disney (–), which travelled to venues on both sides of the Atlantic. What is unique about Inspiring Walt Disney, though, is how it traces back Disney’s aesthetic influences specifically to the courtly material cultures of early modern France while also using elite art objects from this period to animate the story of Disney’s global cultural ascendency. The exhibition brings together two hundred works. Drawn from the Met and various other museums is a rich selection of courtly decorative objects mostly of French origin that includes, among other things, Sèvres vases and Boulle clocks. These are joined by several pieces of Meissen porcelain. The vast majority () of the objects on display, though, are production artworks, like animation cells, supplied by Disney’s own institutional collections, most notably the company’s archives, the Disney Animation Research Library and Disney Imagineering. In terms of the exhibition’s historical scope, there are two chronologies that play out through these objects. On the one hand, there is the Disney timeline that leads from the company’s origins to a period of resurgence in the early s, driven by animated blockbusters like Beauty and the Beast () and The Lion King (). On the other there