Walt Disney wanted Sleeping Beauty to be “a moving illustration.” He meant that literally. He instructed his animators to treat the film not like a traditional cartoon. The result was an aesthetic departure that set Sleeping Beauty apart from anything Disney had done before or since.

What do Theodor de Bry’s map of the Caribbean, the Lindau Gospels, a Moche ear ornament, and Titian’s Venus of Urbino have in common? All find new life in the dimly lit, glittering caverns of the Pirates of the Caribbean at Disneyland, where global medieval and early modern objects have been reimagined and recontextualized for 20th- and 21st-century edutainment. This talk explores how the attraction’s visual culture pirates the past to create an immersive fantasy of the Golde

From medieval manuscripts and unicorns to renaissance landscape paintings and modern design, Disney’s Sleeping Beauty is filled with nods to real art that inspired its unique look. Did you know you can see many of these artworks in person in New York City museums like The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Morgan, and The Cloisters?

A new middle-grade nonfiction series about women in Mesoamerican and Latin American art and history

During the Middle Ages, heart-shaped books were deeply tied to ideas about love, memory, and the soul.

Disney's Sleeping Beauty has a fascinating art history connection with medieval tapestries, including the Unicorn Tapestries

The "Aztec gold" in Pirates of the Caribbean loosely borrows from actual Aztec art and mythology

Disney’s villainous Evil Queen in Snow White is based on a famous medieval sculpture of Uta von Ballenstedt

"it's a small world" at Disneyland includes an important Irish icon

Did you know a famous castle in Switzerland inspired Prince Eric’s palace in The Little Mermaid?

This post considers the historical art and architecture references in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) as a way to understand the film