Disney and Pixar Artwork Headline Hilbert Museum’s 10th Anniversary Exhibitions

Jessica Peralta
47 minutes ago
5 min read

Original works by animator Jørgen Klubien anchor a slate of 11 exhibitions and special events celebrating 10 years of the Hilbert Museum of California Art.

"Woody and Jessie Coming Home, Toy Story 2" (Pixar, 1999), Jørgen Klubien (b. 1958), Story-Beat board, ink on paper. Image courtesy of Hilbert Museum

Right now, Disney fans can get an eyeful of storyboard and character drawings as well as animation cels showing the art behind popular animated films like “The Lion King,” “The Little Mermaid” and “Cars.” But instead of heading to Burbank, this exploration of Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios is happening at the Hilbert Museum in Orange as part of the “Jørgen Klubien at Disney and Pixar” exhibit, running through Oct. 4.

According to the museum, it’s the largest exhibition of Disney and Pixar works there ever.

“(Klubien) is a Danish American artist who started working for Disney during their hand-drawn, hand-colored era,” said Mary Platt, director of the Hilbert Museum of California Art at Chapman University. “So that was kind of like the beginning of the Disney renaissance. He worked on ‘Lion King,’ he worked on ‘Mulan,’ ‘Nightmare Before Christmas.’ He actually wrote the story that ‘Cars’ is based on.”

“Jørgen Klubien at Disney and Pixar” is one of 11 exhibits currently running across the Hilbert Museum’s two buildings. As part of the museum’s 10th-anniversary celebration this year, there’s also a lineup of special events, artist talks and panel discussions planned throughout the year to add to the exhibitions’ experience.

“Jørgen Klubien at Disney and Pixar” runs through Oct. 4 and features drawings, storyboards and character explorations from Disney/Pixar character animator Jørgen Klubien. Photo by Jessica Peralta, Culture OC

“The Hilbert Museum story was made possible by a long list of artists, collectors, university administrators, influencers, enthusiasts and others who have shared our passion for California art since we bought that first painting in 1992,” said Hilbert Museum founder Mark Hilbert in a statement, speaking on behalf of his late wife and co-founder, Janet. “Since our journey has been such a collective effort, we wanted to create an opportunity for our extended community to celebrate our first 10 years with us.”

Since opening in 2016, the museum has had 300,000 visitors, 119 exhibitions, 3,500 individual works displayed and 780 artists represented (with more than 80 percent from California).

Also planned for the 10th anniversary is “By Popular Demand: Visitor Favorites from the Hilbert Collection 2016-2026,” which opens in September to show the most popular oil, watercolor and other works shown over the decade, curated through visitor comments and reactions.

“It'll be basically the ones that we've gotten the most feedback on,” Platt said. “We're just going to go through and say, ‘OK, we know this one's popular, we know this one's popular,’ just because of the feedback that we hear from our visitors.”

Platt said as part of the “Jørgen Klubien at Disney and Pixar” exhibit, she’s hoping to get the artist out to the Hilbert for a couple of talks so that visitors can come hear about his life. Interested guests can sign up for the museum’s email newsletter on the website to find out about that and other upcoming special events.

“So the exhibition has wonderful drawings,” Platt said. “What (Klubien) was, was basically a character animator …. I find the drawings to these are so lively and so engaging …. And even though it's a drawing on a piece of paper, they're just so fascinating because they have so much life in them.”

PHOTO 1: "Emigdio Vasquez: Retrospective 50" runs through May 31 and is the most comprehensive collection of the Orange-based artist's works ever exhibited. Many of the works have never been shown in public before. PHOTO 2: "Cabinets of Wonder: The Art of Ralph Allen Massey" runs through May 31, showing the works of Los Angeles painter Ralph Allen Massey, devoted to exploring the quirks of American pop culture. PHOTO 3: "Radiant: Portable White Plastic Radios 1936-1960" runs through Oct. 4 and captures the history of the portable radio as art. PHOTO 4: "Rock On, California! California’s Rock Poster Revolution" runs through May 31 and was curated by the first Chapman University class to be taught in the Hilbert Museum: the fall semester 2025 Freshman Foundations. Photos by Jessica Peralta, Culture OC

Other current exhibits, running through Oct. 4, include “Harbors and Horizons: Maritime Prints by Phil Dike,” showcasing serigraphs and lithographs inspired by sailboats, docks, marinas and the coast as well as “Witness to a Vanishing West: Maynard Dixon and ‘The Oregon Trail,’” featuring rare original ink drawings created for Francis Parkman’s book “The Oregon Trail.”

“Rock On, California! California’s Rock Poster Revolution,” running through May 31, is a student-curated exhibit. This is the first show at the museum curated entirely by a class of Chapman University students. The students are from fall 2025’s Freshman Foundations class, taught by Platt.

“For their final project, they curated this show,” Platt said. “I gave them a choice of six or seven different subjects that we could put together from the Hilbert Collection and they chose rock and roll posters.”

One exhibit receiving some attention is “Stone and Scene,” running through Oct. 4, and highlighting an Asian practice of meditation using a “viewing stone” or “scholar’s stone.” The exhibit uniquely pairs viewing stones on loan from Southern California collectors with paintings from the Hilbert Collection, curated by Richard Turner, who is a faculty member emeritus from Chapman’s art department and a well-known O.C. artist.

“That is a fascinating show,” Platt said. “We’re actually getting more feedback of people enjoying it than almost any other show, right after we opened it. It's something new and different for us.”

“Stone and Scene” runs through Oct. 4 and features the unique pairing of the Asian tradition of viewing stones with works from The Hilbert Collection. Photo by Jessica Peralta, Culture OC

She said the ancient tradition of viewing stones came out of China before making its way over to Japan, where scholars, writers and artists would pick up interesting stones that they saw and use them as a focus for meditation and creativity.

“It could be a stone that reminded them of a mountain or a landscape or something else in nature, sometimes it might be an animal. It was just all kinds of different stones. Sometimes it was just a beautiful stone,” she said. “In Japan, this developed into … they would put it into what they called a tokonoma, which is a small alcove in a Japanese home, and it usually would have the viewing stone on a little table.”

Platt said that for the exhibit, Turner called on a group of friends who are also viewing stone collectors, who loaned stones for the show.

“Then what he did was he paired the stones with paintings from the Hilbert Collection,” she said. “So you might have a stone, for example, that has a streak of white across it that looks like lightning. And then he found a painting in the Hilbert Collection that has a depiction of lightning on a farm.”

She said the interesting thing is that he hung some of the paintings really high up on the wall and grouped them in different ways — and there are no visible description labels for them. She said he wanted it to resemble walking into someone’s living room containing viewing stones and paintings.

“There's even some living room furniture in the show,” she said, adding that since there are no labels, there’s a table set up with descriptions of everything. “I’ll tell you, the feedback on it has been wonderful. People are fascinated by it. They say it's like nothing they've ever seen at a museum before.”