NEWS FROM THE PRESIDIO The Presidio Collection: A Conversation with Aaron Maestri Exhibit Designer, The David Rockwell Group Is this project different from what you are used to? What kind of artifacts will be in the collection? Tell us about the artifacts that connect with Walt personally. In what way is this Museum different from other museums? What will people find when they enter the Museum? Q. Is this project different from what you are used to? Aaron: It's definitely different from what I'm used to. I normally work on all the museums and all the programs I'm very much working closely in conjunction with the curators. So it's easier a lot of the times in previous projects to get the message really quickly because you're working with a curator and they're like this is what I want to say. Whereas, in this projects, there's just kind of groups and they all have slightly different takes on what you're trying to do. And just trying to reconcile that in your own head and then on to paper, its more challenging, but in a lot of ways it's a bigger story and there's a lot more detail in it and by looking at it all the different people and you get a broader spectrum of story and so you can really get the best of it, I think. Q. What kind of artifacts will be in the collection? Aaron: We're still getting the artifacts together but we're, there's again the kind of the same thing like what we were just saying. there are the really big amazing broad things, where we've got concept art from really well-known rides at Disneyland or attractions. But then there are the things Walt's hand (shows) in a much more personal way, like an original sketch, like sketching out the idea of Mickey Mouse, you can see the hand like of it's creator and as well as the mistakes and the preciseness of it. So its that kind of human connection between some amazingly big ideas and things that went on that kind of snowballed into a culture phenomenon, but they all kind of stem back to a very personal scribble on a piece of paper. and I think that, those kind of artifacts are what make this place amazing and unique. Q. Tell us about the artifacts that connect with Walt personally. Aaron: Well some of the really cool things I think was that Walt wanted to join the army during the First World War but he was too young and he got his mother to sign a form and then after she signed it he changed the date on the application form and we have the application form, and you can see that a seven had been turned into an eight, or some numbers like that. So it's really great to hear those stories and then have a connection like that. There's the violin and that's more of a connection with his father -- it does show his background, that he's growing up in a musical background and he's growing up in a musical household and that's kind of a nice little connection. And his early sketches -- Diane just got his sketches from his high school yearbook or school newspaper, again they're very formative, early years, amazing sketches -- especially because you can see his progression from that's like you are seeing his starting point, which I think is really great. In what way is this Museum different from other museums? Aaron: I think the thing that this place does, that no where else does, is that it portrays the human aspect and the family behind the man. It's very easy to build up Walt Disney into this thing that doesn't even seem real, it's the TV Walt, it's almost like it's not really a person, it's almost like a character of its own. But to pull that back, and show the connections to this real man, a guy who grew up in the Midwest, working on trains, going to school like a normal kid, and then how further down into the Museum all of those things came back, the love of trains … I mean but who builds a whole train line? I think the great thing that this Museum does is that it starts from a very small and very accessible grain of an original experience and shows its progression through to the final thing. Q. What will people find when they enter the Museum? Aaron: There's a mixture of things, there's a lot of things that are placed in context so you get some inkling of the early world of animation that Walt kind of started out in, and then we tie it back then with some of the original Mickey Mouse drawing and also his whole career starting out which wasn't just like a meteoric rise, there were problems along the way, and we have a lot of his telegrams where he writes back to his brother and says things like, "things aren't going well, I'm in New York and this is not great." I think those kind of connections are great. And just the art, the art is incredible. I mean the finished art is great, but its so polished that you kind of, its almost unreal. But the thing that we have that I think is amazing is that we have a lot of concept sketches and so you see the really rough pencil sketches, the kind of character sheets and things like that where people are first really kind of fleshing out what a character that's so incredibly well-known, like Dumbo or Pinocchio, you have these characters and these sheets that basically show the first person thinking, what is Dumbo like, what is his character about and you can see those, which is like the foundations of these things what is so widely recognized now. Thank you. With thanks to Eugene for the wonderful pictures of the Presidio construction site.