Friday, August 8, 2008

The Spirit of Controversy Among Children

Anybody that would be reading this blog probably recalls the Mary Blair Tomorrowland tile murals at Disneyland with fondness. The two murals were installed as a part of New Tomorrowland in 1967. The larger south mural was covered up as part of the construction for Star Tours in 1985/1986; the north mural survived until 1997.

Lesser known facts about the murals:

Their title was "The Spirit of Creative Energies Among Children".

The north mural was themed to communication.

The south mural was themed to energy.

According to Yesterland the murals were not damaged when they were covered, but I have memories of steel beams being planted in the south mural when it was being covered and several openings were cut in the lower right-hand corner for doors.



The lower left hand corner of the south mural was the controversy referred to in the title of this post! The circle on the left is signed by Mary Blair; the triangle contained the first names of other artists.

So what was the controversy? Allow Marty Sklar to explain it in his own words:

(click on the picture to read)



The scans are from the February 19, 1976 Disneyland Line Employee Newsletter.

Does anybody know the current status of Free Enterprise?

2 comments:

Vintage Disneyland Tickets said...

Great post. You can see photographic evidence of the north mural's cover-up here:

http://disneylandcompendium.blogspot.com/2008/04/northern-mural.html

It looks like it did get some damage, but noting that could not be repaired.

The south mural must be in worse shape since the door were put in and I think the part that Mary signed is long gone :-(

Anonymous said...

What happend to the "Free Enterprise" mural?