Cats and Dogs at the Walt Disney Family Museum
A new exhibit opens in the Diane Disney Miller Hall.
The Cats and Dogs exhibit at the Walt Disney Family Museum opens on Saturday. It is a delight for those who find joy in the company of Disney’s more domestic animals.
I was able to tour the show at the member’s preview on Thursday and the exhibit — while far less elaborate than The Jungle Book exhibition which previously had inhabited the Diane Disney Miller Hall — has a lot of charm. Perhaps geared more towards children with its coloring and crafting stations than it is to adult Disney history buffs, it’s hard to walk through this exhibit without a smile on your face.
On the upper floor of the show, I ran into Paige Collins, WDFM’s Senior Membership Coordinator, and we had a lovely conversation about the show’s origins at a museum in Japan as well as a few of the more oddball pieces of art enriching each area. Given the nature of the exhibit, it wasn’t surprising that our conversation drifted to her prior work in animal welfare and adoption as well as my family’s recent experience with puppy fostering and our newly adopted little girl, Francis Peach.
(Note: you can submit photos of your pet to be featured in a display within the exhibit and that display doubles as a list of adoption available pets in the local area.)
While I would suggest that previous shows in the Diane Disney Miller Hall have often been worth an entirely separate trip to the museum — The Jungle Book exhibit kept me occupied for several hours — the Cats and Dogs show is probably better combined with a trip to the main museum at WDFM. It is less multimedia heavy and, while there are some cute activities for kids, it doesn’t contain a lot of extra-textual information that would invite lengthy study of most of the pieces.
That said, this is a warm and breezy installation and well worth a side trip if you’re headed to the museum already.
Cats and Dogs is in the Diane Disney Miller Hall at the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco from June 24th, 2023 to January 14th, 2024.
Timed reservations to enter both this exhibition and, separately, the Main Hall, are required.
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Kelly McCubbin is a columnist for Boardwalk Times