An interview with The Walt Disney Family Museum’s director of collections, Michael Labrie, was recently published. It provides some interesting background to the museum and its growing collection.
Says Labrie:
“Diane just acquired this wonderful collection of small thumbnail paintings of scenes from ‘Lady and the Tramp.’ I call her our chief curator.”
Labrie sees the museum as “a testimonial to the man who was an average, ordinary man who did extraordinary things.” The museum also gives Miller, who denounced Neal Gabler’s critical 2006 biography, “Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination” as “a monstrous piece of libelous junk,” the perfect opportunity to tell her version of her parents’ story.
Although I have yet to visit, I have just about forgiven Diane Disney Miller for building the musuem in the Bay Area near her home instead of somewhere were Walt had a length presence (eg, Burbank or Griffith park). She wanted to distance from his creations and from the Disney Company to allow the museum to set it’s own direction.