Kirsten Komoroske, Executive Director of The Walt Disney Family Museum. Photography © Courtesy The Walt Disney Family Museum
1.What is your museum about and what are its challenges?
The Walt Disney Family Museum is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that celebrates the remarkable life story of Walt Disney. We’re located in San Francisco, just minutes from the Golden Gate Bridge, and have welcomed many visitors since opening our doors on October 1, 2009.
A question that we are still frequently asked is: “Why is the museum in San Francisco?”. Though there are interesting threads of Walt’s story that intersect with the Bay Area, our museum is here because of Diane Disney Miller—Walt’s daughter and our co-founder. Diane and her husband Ron Miller moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in the mid-1980s and founded Silverado Vineyards in Napa Valley.
While so many of us are familiar with Walt and his most celebrated films, very few know that Diane and her family chose to open the museum in San Francisco so that they could be personally involved with the construction and governance of the museum.
