Disney celebrates 100 years with a London exhibition

A brand-new exhibition honouring Disney’s beautiful world for one hundred years opens in London on Friday. It features everything from early designs of Mickey Mouse to Cinderella’s glass slipper.

A variety of works of art, costumes, and props from classic animated films like “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” and “The Jungle Book” as well as more recent live-action works like “Cruella” and “Beauty and the Beast” have been chosen by the Walt Disney Archives.

“Disney 100: The Exhibition” features more than 250 objects and starts with an introduction to animator and producer Walt Disney and his character, Oswald The Lucky Rabbit, who is thought to have been a prototype for Mickey Mouse.

Visitors can view various items throughout the exhibit’s ten galleries, from the carousel horse Dick van Dyke used in “Mary Poppins” to production replicas of Lumiere and Cogsworth from the live-action “Beauty and the Beast” remake.

Additionally included are interactive stations, sketches, and items from Marvel, Pixar, and the “Star Wars” movies, all of which are currently under the Disney umbrella.

At a press preview of the exhibition on Thursday, animator and director Eric Goldberg told Reuters that “Most people’s first experience of being in a movie theatre is usually a Disney movie and that connects us all in, in a huge, huge way.”

“These characters can remain true and universal for decades,” said Goldberg, who has worked on various Disney characters starting with the Genie in the 1992 animated feature “Aladdin”.

Bret Iwan, who has been Mickey Mouse’s voice actor since 2009, does not perceive a threat from artificial intelligence. “Mickey requires such a warmth that I haven’t really taken the time to be bothered by it,” he stated.

The Walt Disney Company is celebrating its 100th anniversary, which is thought to have occurred on October 16, 1923, when Walt and his brother Roy signed a deal with New York cartoon distributor Margaret Winkler. A similar show, which will debut in Chicago next month, is currently running at London’s ExCel.