Magic, Color, Flair: The World of Mary Blair

For more than a dozen years, a soft-spoken woman from Oklahoma dominated art and design at The Walt Disney Company. Mary Blair set the artistic tone for the classic animated films Cinderella (1950), Alice in Wonderland (1951), and Peter Pan (1953). Disney championed her talent in a male-dominated studio system. Blair’s exuberant color palette and modernist style endure today in the fanciful murals at Disney’s Contemporary Resort and in the popular theme park attraction “It’s a Small World.” Blair’s creative influence further extended to print media as a popular illustrator for national magazines and advertisers. Her original paintings from her five Little Golden Books—including I Can Fly, by Ruth Krauss (1950) and The Up and Down Book (1964)—were on view alongside her Disney film production work and her personal sketchbooks. 

This exhibition was organized by The Walt Disney Family Museum, San Francisco, CA. 

Support for this exhibition was generously provided by Random House Children’s Books.