Mickey Mouse and friends will be swarming the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Library this summer. Starting July 6, the library will host the largest display of artifacts from the archives of The Walt Disney Co. — an exhibit that it expects will attract tens of thousands of Disney aficionados from around the world. “Treasures of the Walt Disney Archives” contains 500 pieces spanning the history of the Disney company, from its start in the 1920s to today. The nine-month exhibit includes costumes, props, models and set pieces from its theme parks and films. Half the items have never been on public display. The exhibit also presents a number of firsts for the Simi Valley-based museum. The facility expanded the amount of space for temporary exhibits by 8,000 square feet, and updated its reservation system to serve visitors online. The Disney exhibit will be the first to require a timed ticket for entry. “You don’t have to be an over-the-top Disney fan to appreciate what they have brought,” said John Heubusch, the executive director of the Reagan Library. “If you have ever seen a Disney movie, you will have fun at this exhibit.” The Reagan Library, which opened in 1991, is a major tourist draw for Ventura County and is the most visited of the 13 presidential libraries managed by the National Archives and Records Administration. The facility is on track for 500,000 visitors this year, comparable with past years. The library does not separately count visitors viewing its special exhibits. Previous special exhibits featured the Magna Carta, George Washington, the history of motorcycles, and NASCAR race cars. At Christmas time, the library has a display of elaborately decorated Christmas trees. An exhibit on Walt Disney was displayed in 2001. The Disney exhibit is expected to bring in additional visitors, Heubusch said. As a gauge, he cited the 40,000 attendees of the biennial expo in Anaheim hosted by D23, the official Disney fan club. “We are likely to see those kinds of numbers for this,” Heubusch said. The City of Simi Valley has not conducted an economic study of visitor spending at city hotels, restaurants and shops, but it anticipates an influx of visitors for the “Treasures” exhibit, said Brian Gabler, assistant city manager and director of economic development. “There are a lot of people with a huge amount of interest in all things Disney,” Gabler said. “The buzz has been out there for a while about this coming to the Reagan Library.” D23 members Jim and Susie Wilber of Thousand Oaks are encouraging family members who live out of state and local friends to visit the exhibit. “We are telling them ‘Go see this because you may not see it again,’” said Jim Wilber, who has been a long-time Disney fan. Considering the size and scope of “Treasures,” the exhibit came together quickly. The first meetings took place in January and the initial plans finalized in February, said Steven Clark, who heads up D23. Disney archives employees and the fan club pulled out all the stops to make the July deadline. In addition to selecting the artifacts, and packing and shipping them, organizers also worked on graphics, videos and the catalogue. “Every part of our organization has spent a lot of overtime hours working on this,” Clark said. The Disney archive is stored in 80,000 square feet of space in buildings in Burbank and Glendale, so there was a lot of memorabilia to work with for the “Treasures” exhibit. Clark and other organizers started with the most iconic of films and theme park attractions, including costumes and props from “Mary Poppins” and “Bedknobs and Broomsticks,” the flubber-powered Model T from “The Absent Minded Professor,” the model of the submarine Nautilus from “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” and the busts of 44 presidents used to make the animatronic characters from the “Hall of Presidents.” Modern artifacts include costumes and props from “Captain America” and “Iron Man 2” and the model of the Black Pearl from the “Pirates of the Caribbean” films. Clark and Heubusch were excited about the recreation of Walt Disney’s office containing his desk, bookshelves, piano and other furnishings from the Burbank studio. “That was the creative epicenter so it is something special and iconic,” Clark said. Some larger items, like the Black Pearl, would not be displayed had it not been for the library’s expansion, which included cutting a hole in a wall and covering an open area with a tent. Heubusch declined to cite the cost of the renovations, but said the project was “a substantial investment” for the long-term prospects of the facility. “This additional space allows us to bring bigger and bolder exhibits than we have had in the past,” Heubusch said.
MOVE OVER, GIPPER
