THIS WEEK’S NEW EPISODE
This week’s guest is Kirsten Komoroske, executive director of the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco! We talk about the failures and setbacks that shaped Disney’s life, how the museum wrangles a massive collection to tell a decades-long story, and why it’s the closest thing San Francisco has to a presidential library. Plus: Why one bench in the museum has a plaque telling you to sit down.
Find the podcast on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify — or find your favorite app here! A full transcript of this episode is available here.
BEHIND THE SCENES
🏰 The official story
Eric Johnson
I’ve been looking forward to this episode since March, when I visited Disneyland and checked out “Walt Disney: A Magical Life.” It’s a fascinating contrast with the Walt Disney Family Museum, and I didn’t have time to get into it in the episode — so you get the download here.
“A Magical Life” is primarily a short film, which finishes with a technological flourish: For a few minutes, a robot (aka audio-animatronic) version of Walt speaks to the audience, using real archival audio. My favorite part of the experience was actually the preshow, a museum-style exhibit of maps, illustrations, photos, and audio-animatronics from the theme park.
The robotic Walt is impressive, and the preshow is genuinely cool, but the show speeds past or skips the drama in his life, which is what you’d expect when a huge for-profit company gets to own the narrative. I left the theater feeling a bit hollow, and wishing everyone there would also visit San Francisco to get a fuller story.
I admire the Museum’s willingness to address things that would be too taboo for Disneyland, like Walt’s HUAC testimony, the smoking habit that killed him, and even Song of the South. You probably won’t see those things in ads for the museum, but they’re an important part of Walt’s story.
The WDFM is run by a nonprofit, not The Walt Disney Company — and in my opinion, it shows.
— Eric
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IN MY INBOX
🦖 Dinosaurs, superworms, and AI backlash
Eric Johnson
In Philadelphia, the Academy of Natural Sciences — the oldest natural history museum in the US — is scheduled to close September 30. Go see it now while you can! I was just there in May; their Lewis & Clark exhibit is brilliantly presented, and you can get super close to some incredible fossils. [WPVI]
And the Academy’s problems are not unique: “Natural history collections are difficult to maintain,” writes Sabrina Imbler. “They are always decaying… But it should not be up to these museums to monetize their collections in order to justify their existence.” [Defector]
How do you maintain a skeleton anyway? Turns out researchers in Germany may have found a new way: They “used Zophobas morio larvae — better known as superworms — to clean animal remains… efficiently strip[ping] away soft tissue while leaving the bones unharmed.” [The Cool Down]
Tech backlash comes to Madison, WI as hundreds of people object to an AI-generated sculpture: “I have a lot of friends who are artists, and everyone had similar feelings, like — why are they deciding to do this?” Expect to see a lot more of this! [The Capital Times]
39 pieces of human remains from the Naga, an indigenous South Asian people, are being repatriated from a U.K. museum to the tribe in India: “They were included in an exhibit called ‘Treatment of Dead Enemies,’ under the label ‘headhunting trophies,’ displayed alongside remains from other Indigenous groups.” [The New York Times]
THE GIFT SHOP
🐰 It all started with a mouse… well, actually, a rabbit
Everyone who subscribes to this newsletter before November 10 has been entered into our Gift Shop Giveaway! (Full rules here)
(Not subscribed yet? You can do that right here.)
One of the prize packages will include these pins of Mickey Mouse and Walt Disney’s first original character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. They’re exclusively found at the Walt Disney Family Museum gift shop, so if you haven’t been to the museum yet, now’s your chance! The winner will also get stickers, postcards, and maybe some surprise goodies!
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Before we go … one Redditor studying Sumerian sent the cuneiform equivalent of a cold email to the British Museum. And it looks like they are going to reply in kind!
