drawing

Sept. 18 (UPI) — The fall semester has arrived with fewer international students on campuses in the United States.

NAFSA: National Association of International Educators estimates that the United States will lose $7 billion in revenue and produce about 60,000 fewer jobs due to a 15% drop in overall enrollment this academic year. Contributing to the enrollment decrease is a projected 30-40% decline in new international students.

The estimates are based on State Department and Student and Exchange Visitor Information System information, which is published monthly. There are a few factors contributing to the decline in international students and the primary drivers are related to U.S. visa and immigration policies.

Since its initial revocation of student visas, the Trump administration has begun restricting visas from 19 countries. In late May, the State Department paused student visa processing for three weeks, causing delays for students trying to come to the United States.

International Student and Scholar Services personnel told UPI that some international students were arriving late to campus due to issues with the visa application process over the summer.

Universities also advised international students to remain in the United States, rather than returning to their home countries during the summer.

Sarah Spreitzer, vice president and chief of staff of the American Council on Education, told UPI visa processing was paused during the peak time when the State Department would normally be processing applications.

More policy changes are being discussed that have Spreitzer concerned about U.S. higher education’s place in the world.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has proposed a new rule that would limit the duration of time visa holders, including international students, can remain in the United States. The proposal would require students to complete their academic program in no longer than four years.

“I’m worried that these are continuing to send messages to prospective international students that it’s going to be difficult to get here, when you’re in the United States there may not be certainty how long you’re going to have your visa and as a result I think we’re going to see drops in our international enrollment for this academic year,” Spreitzer said.

More clarity on how many international students and scholars are on campuses this fall will come in the Institute of International Education’s “Open Doors Report” in November. The report provides data on international students and American students studying abroad.

The Institute of International Education’s spring survey of high education institutions found that 87% of respondents from U.S. institutions expected visa barriers to lead to students not coming to the United States for academic credits. About 71% expected potential problems at ports of entry and 69% shared concerns about students’ visa statuses while they are in the United States.

About 35% of U.S. institutions experienced decreases in international student applications and 32% said the number of applications remained relatively the same.

Colleges and universities in the United States continue to seek international enrollees, despite challenges presented by federal policies.

Spreitzer said the response from American institutions echoes how they responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time, international students faced questions about whether they should or could stay on U.S. campuses and if they left, whether they would be able to return to continue their studies.

“Our institutions responded by saying, ‘We want to help our international students,'” Spreitzer said. “Our institutions are doing a lot of the same things. So if a student has been admitted but for some reason their visa processing has been delayed or it’s just taking longer for their student visa to be processed, they’re telling them, ‘You can defer for a year or you could start your studies on a campus we have outside of the United States and then transfer into the U.S. institution.'”

Institutions are also working to keep research laboratories open after the federal government canceled more than $2 billion in grant funds and health research funding.

The efforts of academic institutions and education advocates continue in the face of regulatory barriers. Rather than risking beginning on a degree track in the United States that they may not be able to complete, some international students are looking elsewhere for opportunity.

Global competitors are stepping in to grant students those opportunities.

The United States’ position as a destination for higher education has become more fiercely challenged by the likes of Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom to name a few.

As of June, international higher education enrollees in Australia have increased by 12% since 2019, according to the Australian Government Department of Education.

In the first quarter of the year, student visa applications in the United Kingdom increased by 32% over quarter one in 2024, according to the Higher Education Policy Institute. In the 2023-2024 academic year, India surpassed China in sending the most students to the United Kingdom for the first time in more than a decade.

The Migration Policy Institute’s July report on international students says the costs of education in the United States, travel restrictions and increasing opportunities in other countries have caused fewer international students to choose to study in the United States in the past decade.

About 16% of the 6.9 million international students in the world attended U.S. institutions in the 2023-2024 academic year, down from 20% of 4.5 million students in 2013-2014.

“We’ve seen countries actually putting together programs and pots of funding to attract those researchers that either are in the U.S. right now and are nervous about staying or those researchers that are choosing not to come to the United States,” Spreitzer said.

“I know France, the [European Union], Denmark, they’ve all put together these programs encouraging people to apply. The messaging around it is ‘if you come here, we will make sure that your lab is going to be funded, that your research is going to be funded.'”

Fox News doesn’t want to talk about the crude doodle of a naked woman, with its creepy message printed across her breasts and torso, and a signature — “Donald” — in her pubic area.

And it certainly doesn’t want to draw attention to a newly released photo of the convicted child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein holding an oversized check signed “DJTRUMP,” with a caption that reads, “Jeffrey showing early talents with money + women! Sells ‘fully depreciated’ [female’s name redacted] to Donald Trump for $22,500.”

While just about everyone has had something to say about the most damning documents yet to come out of the so-called Epstein files, America’s No. 1 cable news network has opted to sit this one out.

Questions about President Trump’s shared history with the nation’s most notorious sex offender shot to the top of news feeds Tuesday after the Republican-led House Oversight Committee released documents to the public that it had subpoenaed from the Epstein estate. The material included notes, drawings and photos from friends and associates to Epstein on his 50th birthday in 2003.

Donald Trump, his future wife Melania, Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell at Mar-a-Lago in 2000.

(Davidoff Studios Photography / Getty Images)

The “body art” letter that appears to be written by Trump features this bizarre, imaginary conversation:

Voice Over: There must be more to life than having everything.
Donald: Yes, there is, but I won’t tell you what it is.
Jeffrey: Nor will I, since I already know what it is.
Donald: We have certain things in common, Jeffrey.
Jeffrey: Yes, we do come to think of it.
Donald: Enigmas never age, have you noticed that?
Jeffrey: As a matter of fact, it was clear to me the last time I saw you.
Donald: A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.

Fox News on Tuesday suppressed the skeezy birthday note like a dark family secret and instead focused on safer, more comfortable subject matter, like Bill Clinton. But there wasn’t much to say since the birthday greeting that appeared to have been signed by the former president lacked drawings of naked females or implications about buying girls and/or women for sex. The short passage praised Epstein’s “childlike curiosity.” Thankfully, Fox had other breaking stories to chase.

Host Sean Hannity focused on a deadly North Carolina train stabbing and how it implicated Democrats’ “woke” criminal policies. Earlier in the day, Fox News was busy plumbing the depths of the Biden “autopen” scandal after a “bombshell report.”

Fox News’ website was equally as busy avoiding the nation’s top story. It led with “Charlotte mayor scores primary reelection victory amid national backlash over gruesome train murder” and another breaking story: “Hellfire missile bounces off mysterious orb in stunning UAP footage shown to Congress.”

Its story on the scandalous documents? “Inside Epstein’s infamous ‘birthday book’: Clinton’s note, poolside candids and bizarre animal pics.” The piece was toward the bottom of the page, tucked away like dirty laundry. It never once mentioned Trump.

Ghislaine Maxwell compiled the birthday book, collecting sentiments from Epstein’s friends and then gifting the album to her high-rolling financier bestie. Less than two decades later, she would be convicted of sex trafficking, among other charges. Epstein died in jail of a reported suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on similar charges. Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison term.

Trump said Tuesday when asked to respond to the birthday letter, “I don’t comment on something that’s a dead issue. I gave all comments to the staff. It’s a dead issue.” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Tuesday during a briefing that “the president did not write this letter. He didn’t sign this letter.” She said the administration would be open to a handwriting expert reviewing the signature on the letter.

But several news organizations have beaten them to it and compared the signature on the Epstein letter against Trump’s signature on other documents, and found them to be similar.

The alleged Trump letter was first reported by the Wall Street Journal in July, when the president denied writing it and said it was “a fake thing.” He filed a lawsuit against the paper’s publisher, reporters and executives, including News Corp. owner Rupert Murdoch.

The album also contains messages that appear to be from other notable personalities, including the current U.K. ambassador to the U.S., Peter Mandelson; Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, who was part of a legal team representing Trump during his first impeachment trial; and billionaire retail magnate Les Wexner.

The caption under the novelty-check photo appears to be written by Joel Pashcow, a Mar-a-Lago club member and former chairman of a New York real estate company. The woman’s name and photo are redacted in the caption and the image. Lawyers for Epstein’s estate removed the names and photos of women and minors who appeared in the book so possible victims of Epstein could not be identified.

Other drawings in the book make Trump’s alleged contribution look docile. They include a queasy illustration of Epstein handing out balloons to young girls. Fox did mention the drawings of Epstein being massaged by several topless women around a pool, and the one of a zebra having sex with a lion. How much time until it’s suggested that it could be the work of Biden’s autopen? 5,4,3…

WASHINGTON — Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released on Monday a sexually suggestive letter to Jeffrey Epstein purportedly signed by President Trump, which he has denied.

Trump has said he did not write the letter or create the drawing of a curvaceous woman that surrounds the letter. He filed a $10-billion lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal for a report on the alleged letter.

The letter was included as part of a 2003 album compiled for alleged sex trafficker Epstein’s birthday. The president has denied having anything to do with it. Democrats on the House Oversight Committee received a copy of the birthday album on Monday as part of a batch of documents from Epstein’s estate.

The White House did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

Trump has denied writing the letter and creating the drawing, calling a report on it “false, malicious, and defamatory.”

“These are not my words, not the way I talk. Also, I don’t draw pictures,” Trump said.

The letter released by the committee looks exactly as described by the the Wall Street Journal in its report.

The letter bearing Trump’s name and signature includes text framed by a hand-drawn outline of what appears to be a curvaceous woman.

“A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret,” the letter says.

Price writes for the Associated Press.

SANTA MONICA, Calif. — Many fled when wildfires devastated Los Angeles earlier this year, but Guillermo del Toro rushed back in, determined to save his lifelong collection of horror memorabilia.

It’s the same loyalty that finds him making another tough decision to protect the items he loves like family: letting some of them go.

Del Toro partnered with Heritage Auctions for a three-part auction to sell a fraction of a collection that is bursting at the seams. Online bidding for the first part on Sept. 26 started Thursday and includes over a hundred items, with more headed to the auction block next year.

“This one hurts. The next one, I’m going to be bleeding,” Del Toro, 60, said of the auction series. “If you love somebody, you have estate planning, you know, and this is me estate planning for a family that has been with me since I was a kid.”

Del Toro is one of the industry’s most respected filmmakers, whose fascination with monsters and visual style will shape generations to come. But at his core, the Mexican-born horror buff is a collector. The Oscar winner has long doubled as the sole caretaker of the “Bleak House” — which stretches across two and a half Santa Monica homes nearly overflowing with thousands of ghoulish creatures, iconic comic drawings and paintings, books and movie props.

The houses function not just as museums, but as libraries and workspaces where his imagination bounces off the oxblood-painted walls.

“I love what I have because I live with it. I actually am a little nuts, because I say hi to some of the life-size figures when I turn on the light,” Del Toro told The Associated Press, sitting in the dining room of one of the houses, now a sanctuary for “Haunted Mansion” memorabilia. “This is curated. This is not a casual collection.”

The auction includes behind-the-scene drawings and one-of-a-kind props from Del Toro’s own classics, as well as iconic works like Bernie Wrightson’s illustrations for “Frankenstein” and Mike Mignola’s pinup artwork for “Hellraiser.”

A race to save horror history

In January, Del Toro had only a couple hours, his car and a few helping hands to save key pieces from the fires. Out of the over 5,000 items in his collection, he managed to move only about 120 objects. It wasn’t the first time, as fires had come dangerously close to Bleak House twice before.

The houses were spared, but fear consumed him. If a fire or earthquake swallowed them, he thought, “What came out of it? You collected insurance? And what happened to that little segment of Richard Corben’s life, or Jack Kirby’s craft, or Bernie Wrightson’s life?”

An auction, Del Toro said, gives him peace of mind, as it ensures the items will land in the hands of another collector who will protect the items as he has. These are not just props or trinkets, he said, but “historical artifacts. They’re pieces of audiovisual history for humanity.” And his life’s mission has been to protect as much of this history as he can.

“Look, this is in reaction to the fires. This is in reaction to loving this thing,” Del Toro told the AP.

The initial auction uncovers who Del Toro is as a collector, he said. Upcoming parts will expose how the filmmaker thinks, which he called a much more personal endeavor. The auction isn’t just a “piece of business,” for him, but rather a love letter to collectors everywhere, and encouragement to think beyond a movie and “learn to read and write film design in a different way. That’s my hope.”

A house full of ‘unruly kids’

Caring for the Bleak House collection feels like being on “a bus with 160 kids that are very unruly, and I’m driving for nine hours,” Del Toro said. “I gotta take a rest.”

The auction will give the filmmaker some breathing room from the collection’s arduous maintenance. The houses must stay at a certain temperature, without direct sunlight — all of which is monitored solely by Del Toro, who often spends most of his day there.

He selects the picture frame for every drawing, dusts all the artifacts and arranges every bookshelf mostly himself, having learned his lesson from the handful of times he allowed outside help. One time, Del Toro said, he found someone “cleaning an oil painting with Windex, and I almost had a heart attack.”

“It’s very hard to have someone come in and know why that trinket is important,” he said. “It’s sort of a very bubbled existence. But you know, that’s what you do with strange animals — you put them in small environments where they can survive. That’s me.”

Each room is organized by theme, with one room dedicated to each of his major works, from “Hellboy” to “Pacific Rim.” Del Toro typically spends his entire work day at one of the houses, which he picks depending on the task at hand. The “Haunted Mansion” dining room, for instance, is an excellent writing space.

“If I could, I would live in the Haunted Mansion,” he said. “So, this is the second best.”

Building a mini Bleak House

In selecting which items to sell, Del Toro said he “wanted somebody to be able to re-create a mini version of Bleak House.”

Auction items include concept sketches and props from Del Toro’s 1992 debut film, “Cronos,” all the way to his more recent works, like 2021’s “Nightmare Alley.”

The starting bids vary, from a couple thousand dollars up to hundreds of thousands. One of Wrightson’s drawings for a 1983 illustrated version of Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” is the highest priced item, starting at $200,000.

The auction also includes art from legends like Richard Corben, Jack Kirby and H.R. Giger, whose work Del Toro wrote in the catalog “represent the pinnacle of comic book art in the last quarter of the twentieth century.”

Other cultural touchstones in illustration that are represented in the auction include rare images from the 1914 short film “Gertie the Dinosaur,” one of the earliest animated films, and original art for Disney’s “Sleeping Beauty” by Eyvind Earle and Kay Nielsen.

“As collectors, you are basically keeping pieces of culture for generations to come. They’re not yours,” Del Toro said. “We don’t know which of the pieces you’re holding is going to be culturally significant … 100 years from now, 50 years from now. So that’s part of the weight.”

Luna writes for the Associated Press.

United States President Donald Trump has announced that he will allow 600,000 Chinese students into US universities.

His announcement on Monday, which marks a sharp departure from the Trump administration’s crackdown on Chinese students launched earlier this year, has caught his conservative base off guard.

Here is more about what Trump is saying now, in contrast to what the administration has said in the past – and how some within his Make America Great Again (MAGA) support base are reacting.

What has Trump announced about Chinese students?

During a meeting on Monday at the Oval Office with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung, reporters asked Trump whether he would meet Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Trump responded: “President Xi would like me to come to China. It’s a very important relationship. As you know, we are taking a lot of money in from China because of the tariffs and different things.”

He then talked about Chinese students: “I hear so many stories about ‘We are not going to allow their students’, but we are going to allow their students to come in. We are going to allow it. It’s very important – 600,000 students.”

On Tuesday, during a cabinet meeting, Trump reiterated his recent sentiments about Chinese students, saying, “I told this to President Xi that we’re honoured to have their students here.

“Now, with that, we check and we’re careful, we see who is there.”

Trump said that the US would struggle without Chinese students.

The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that Trump told Xi during a phone call in June that “the US loves to have Chinese students coming to study in America”.

How has the Chinese government reacted?

Speaking at a regular news conference on Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun expressed hope that Trump would act on his commitment to admit Chinese students into US universities.

Guo also urged the US to stop “unprovoked harassment, interrogation and deportation” of Chinese students.

What has the Trump administration said about Chinese students in the past?

In late May, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that Trump would “aggressively” revoke the visas of Chinese students.

In an X post, Rubio wrote: “The US will begin revoking visas of Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields.”

The Trump administration did not provide clear details at the time about which students would be affected by the revocations. Observers viewed the brief announcement as intentionally vague.

“I think the vagueness is part of the [Trump administration’s] strategy, because it is not about a concrete policy,” Kyle Chan, a researcher on China at Princeton University, told Al Jazeera in May. “I don’t think it’s really, at the end of the day, about national security and trying to find the few individuals who may pose a genuine risk.”

In August, the US State Department revoked 6,000 international student visas because of violations of US law and overstays, according to the BBC, which quoted an unnamed department official. The nationalities of the students whose visas had been revoked were not known.

While Rubio did not specify what qualifies as a “critical field”, in March, a US congressional committee of the House of Representatives sent a letter to leadership at multiple US universities requesting information about Chinese nationals enrolled in advanced science, technology, engineering, and medicine programmes on their campuses.

John Moolenaar, chair of the congressional committee, claimed that the Chinese Communist Party was placing Chinese researchers in top US institutions to access sensitive technology.

How many Chinese students are there in the US?

During the 2023-2024 academic year, 277,398 Chinese students were enrolled in US universities, making up 24.5 percent of the 1.13 million international students, according to the annual Open Doors report from the Institute of International Education (IIE) and the US State Department.

According to the report, Chinese students were second only to Indian students, who constituted 29 percent of international students in the 2023-2024 year.

During the 2022-2023 academic year, Chinese students made up 27.4 percent of the international student population.

The proportion was even higher in 2020-2021, when 34.7 percent of international students in the US were from China.

What is behind Trump’s latest announcement about admitting Chinese students?

During an interview with Fox News on Monday, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said Trump’s recent statements stem from a “rational economic view”.

Lutnick said that 15 percent of US universities would go out of business without international students.

International students at US colleges and universities contributed $43.8bn to the US economy and supported more than 378,000 jobs during the 2023-2024 academic year, according to data released by the nonprofit organisation, NAFSA: Association of International Educators.

According to NAFSA, there were 1.1 million international students in the US, each contributing about $39,800 on average.

By that calculation, the 277,398 Chinese students in the US in 2023-24 would have contributed in excess of $11bn to the US economy that year.

How have Trump supporters reacted?

Trump’s recent statements have drawn ire from some within his MAGA base.

Republican Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote in an X post on Monday: “If refusing to allow these Chinese students to attend our schools causes 15 percent of them to fail then these schools should fail anyways because they are being propped up by the CCP.”

We should not let in 600,000 CHINESE students to attend American colleges and universities that may be loyal to the CCP.

If refusing to allow these Chinese students to attend our schools causes 15% of them to fail then these schools should fail anyways because they are being…

— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) August 26, 2025

Trump ally and far-right internet personality Laura Loomer made a series of posts on X opposing Trump’s idea of bringing in Chinese students. One of the posts read: “Nobody, I repeat nobody, wants 600,000 more Chinese ‘students’ aka Communist spies in the United States.”

News site Axios reported that former White House adviser and Trump aide Steve Bannon said on Tuesday: “Any foreign student that does come here ought to have an exit visa stapled to his or her diploma to leave immediately. Give them 30 days.”

Right-wing internet personality Christopher Rufo wrote in an X post on Monday: “We can’t accept 600,000 Chinese students. If anything, we should reduce the number of Chinese visas, especially for students with political connections to the CCP.”

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is the main party in China, with about 100 million card-carrying members. China has about 400 million families, so on average, one in every four Chinese citizens has an immediate relative in the CCP.

‘Eye-catching’ was how Gray described Mulligan when he arrived in the summer, and the 22-year-old has only continued to win over the fans with his performances.

He tops the charts when it comes to successful dribbles, and ranks highly for touches in the opposition box and duels won.

What that boils down to is a box-to-box midfielder who not only gets stuck in, but drives forward and gets Hibs into the right areas of the pitch.

“Looks like a brilliant signing,” said Hibs’ fan David when BBC Sport Scotland asked for opinions on Mulligan’s arrival. “A very versatile player who can play in multiple positions, so it will be very interesting to see how he settles in.”

“Brilliant signing,” added Alex. “Good young Scottish talent with good experience at a young age. He will thrive at Hibs.”

Thrive is the word. Although he was rested from the starting XI against Livingston at the weekend, he came on in the 82nd minute to score the second goal – an absolute screamer from outside the box that rattled in off a post.

Having been moved between midfield and right wing-back during his time at Dundee, it’s unsurprising that goals never featured heavily in his previous stats.

But he seems to have added that dimension to his game, having been allowed by Gray to roam forward in attack, which continues to excel in his nascent days at Easter Road.

Robert Wilson, a leader in avant-garde theater who collaborated with Philip Glass, David Byrne and Lady Gaga over his six-decade career, has died. He was 83.

The “Einstein on the Beach” director died Thursday at his home in Water Mill, N.Y., after a “brief but acute illness,” according to his website.

“While facing his diagnosis with clear eyes and determination, he still felt compelled to keep working and creating right up until the very end,” the statement reads. “His works for the stage, on paper, sculptures and video portraits, as well as the Watermill Center, will endure as Robert Wilson’s artistic legacy.”

Wilson was born on Oct. 4, 1941, in Waco, Texas, to a conservative Southern Baptist family. He struggled with a speech impediment and learning disabilities as a child but was aided by his ballet teacher, Byrd Hoffman.

“She heard me stutter, and she told me, ‘You should take more time to speak. You should speak slowly,’ ” he told the Observer in 2015. “She said one word over a long period of time. She said go home and try it. I did. Within six weeks, I had overcome the stuttering.”

In 1968, Wilson opened an experimental theater workshop named after his mentor: the Byrd Hoffman School of Byrds. He created the Byrd Hoffman Water Mill Foundation in 1969, under which he established the Watermill Center in 1992.

In his early 20s, Wilson moved to Brooklyn, N.Y., where he studied interior design and architecture at the Pratt Institute. Later, he joined the recreation department of Goldwater Memorial Hospital, where he brought dance to catatonic polio patients with iron lungs.

“Because the patients were largely paralyzed, the work he was doing with them was more mental than physical,” wrote his former colleague Robyn Brentano in Frieze. “With his unconventional frankness and tenderness, he drew out people’s hidden qualities.”

Wilson started teaching movement classes in Summit, N.J., while he wrote his early plays. One day in 1968, he witnessed a white police officer about to strike a deaf, mute Black boy, Raymond Andrews, while walking down the street. Wilson came to Andrews’ defense, appeared in court on his behalf and eventually adopted him. Together, Andrews and Wilson created “Deafman Glance,” a seven-hour “silent opera,” which premiered in 1970 in Iowa City, Iowa.

“The world of a deaf child opened up to us like a wordless mouth. For more than four hours, we went to inhabit this universe where, in the absence of words, of sounds, 60 people had no words except to move,” wrote French Surrealist Louis Aragon after the 1971 Paris premiere. “I never saw anything more beautiful in the world since I was born. Never, never has any play come anywhere near this one, because it is at once life awake and the life of closed eyes, the confusion between everyday life and the life of each night, reality mingles with dream, all that’s inexplicable in the life of deaf man.”

In 1973, Glass attended a showing of Wilson’s “The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin,” which ran for 12 hours from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. The two artists, united by their interest in experimenting with time and space in theater, soon teamed up to create “Einstein on the Beach,” which premiered in 1976 in Avignon, France.

“We worked first with the time — four hours — and how we were going to divide it up,” Glass told the Guardian in 2012. “I discovered that Bob thinks with a pencil and paper; everything emerged as drawings. I composed music to these, and then Bob began staging it.”

Times classical music critic Mark Swed called “Einstein” “easily the most important opera of the last half century,” even though “nothing about what composer Philip Glass and director Robert Wilson put onstage was opera.” Indeed, “Einstein” has become a cult classic despite the fact it has no Einstein, no beach and no narrative.

Wilson and Glass partnered again to create “the CIVIL warS: a tree is best measured when it is down,” which also featured music from Talking Heads frontman Byrne, for the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. The project, meant to span 12 hours, was ultimately never completed due to funding problems. In 1995, Wilson shared his concerns about arts funding in the U.S. with The Times.

“The government should assume leadership,” Wilson told Times contributor Jan Breslauer. “By giving the leadership to the private sector in a capitalistic society, we’re going to measure the value of art by how many products we can sell. We need to have a cultural policy [instead]. There has to be a balance between government and the private sector.

“One of the few things that will remain of this time is what artists are doing,” Wilson says. “They are the journal and the diary of our time.”

In addition to his stage work, Wilson created drawings, sculptures, furniture and installations, which he showed at the Paula Cooper Gallery in New York beginning in 1975. In 2004, Wilson produced a series of video portraits featuring Brad Pitt, Winona Ryder, Renée Fleming and Alan Cumming. He would return to the medium again in 2013 with Lady Gaga as his subject.

His work on the installation “Memory/Loss” earned him a Golden Lion for sculpture at the Venice Biennale in 1993.

One of Wilson’s last projects was an installation commissioned by Salone del Mobile in April Centering on Michelangelo’s Rondanini Pietà at Milan’s Castello Sforzesco, the project explored the Virgin Mary’s pain following Christ’s death with a combination of music, light and sculpture.

“I’m creating my own vision of the artist’s unfinished masterpiece, torn between a feeling of reverential awe and profound admiration,” he told Wallpaper.

Wilson is survived by Andrews; his sister, Suzanne; and his niece, Lori Lambert.

State parks officials say they’re unveiling a lottery-style drawing system for select campsites in three of California’s most sought-after state park campgrounds: Malibu Creek, Morro Bay and McArthur-Burney Falls.

The new system began this month at Malibu Creek, allowing would-be campers to enter a lottery for possible openings eight months away — in this case, from March 1 to April 1, 2026.

Drawings are held seven months ahead of the stay, giving the winners 30 days to claim and pay for reservations. There’s a limit of one entry per visitor per drawing. ADA sites are included. Malibu Creek has about 63 campsites.

The programs will begin later this summer at Morro Bay in San Luis Obispo County (over 140 campsites) and McArthur-Burney Falls in Shasta County (about 128 campsites and cabins), where growing crowds have posed challenges for visitors and rangers in recent years. Campsite reservation costs (which include nightly rates and an $8.25 reservation fee) are unchanged and the lottery process is free, but fees could be added later.

Meanwhile, the parks department has also streamlined its reservation websites so that campers can move more easily between the informational site parks.ca.gov and the booking site reservecalifornia.com and see fresher information on what’s available. In announcing the coming changes, parks officials said travelers will able to see “almost real-time campsite status and availability at other nearby campgrounds.”

The move to a lottery system had been expected since late 2023, when California’s legislature approved several measures designed to reduce no-shows and give more people access to the most popular spots. In previous years, reservations at many campgrounds have vanished within minutes of opening.

State parks communications staffers were unable to say Monday exactly how many of the campsites at Malibu Creek, Morro Bay and McArthur-Burney Falls would be part of the drawing.

The system is based on a pilot project at the State Ravine Cabins in Mt. Tamalpais State Park, where rangers started using a reservation drawing system in 2023. That system is still in place.

To level the playing field among those who make repeated use of the campground drawings, the state has set up a points system. “Unsuccessful applicants will receive one point to be used in future drawings, which increases their chances of winning until they are awarded a reservation,” the state’s FAQ on the system explains. “Once a visitor wins a reservation, their points are removed and their balance starts at zero.”

Statewide, California’s campground system continues to open most of its 15,000 campsites for online reservations at 8 a.m., six months ahead of the booking date, on a rolling basis. (In other words, at 8 a.m. Aug. 3 the state will start taking reservations for stays on the night of Feb. 3.) Telephone reservations are still possible at (800) 444-PARK (7275).

In May, a state parks spokesman said the state’s most sought-after campgrounds for the last two years have been Pismo State Beach, Crystal Cove State Park, Refugio State Beach, Half Moon Bay State Beach, Doheny State Beach, Bolsa Chica State Beach, San Clemente State Beach, New Brighton State Beach, San Elijo State Beach and Morro Bay State Park.

WASHINGTON — President Trump said Monday that he ended his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein and threw the now-disgraced financier out of his private club in Florida after Epstein betrayed him more than once by hiring people who had worked for him.

Trump did not say what the people’s jobs were or where they worked, and the White House had no immediate comment. But with the fresh comments, Trump shed a little light on the reason why he has said he had ended the relationship with Epstein, though Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, recently said on X that, “The fact is that the President kicked him out of his club for being a creep.”

Epstein killed himself, authorities say, in a New York jail cell in 2019 as he awaited trial on sex trafficking charges. Trump and his top allies stoked conspiracy theories about Epstein’s death before Trump returned to power and are now struggling to manage the fallout after the Justice Department said Epstein did in fact die by suicide and that it would not release additional documents about the case.

The president and his allies, some of whom are now in the administration, had promised to release the files.

The case has dogged Trump at home and abroad and even followed Vice President JD Vance during an appearance in his home state of Ohio on Monday. A small group of protesters assembled outside a factory in Canton that Vance toured, holding signs that spelled out “JD Protects Pedophiles” and indicating that “GOP” stands for “Guardians Of Pedophiles.”

The Republican president spoke at his golf property in Turnberry, Scotland, as he sat with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer after the leaders had met and were answering questions from U.S. and U.K. journalists. Asked to explain why the relationship had faltered, Trump said, “That’s such old history, very easy to explain, but I don’t want to waste your time by explaining it.”

He then explained, saying he stopped talking to Epstein after “he did something that was inappropriate.”

“He hired help and I said, ‘Don’t ever do that again,’” Trump said. “He stole people that worked for me. I said, ‘Don’t ever do that again.’ He did it again, and I threw him out of the place, persona non grata.”

“I threw him out and that was it. I’m glad I did, if you want to know the truth,” Trump added.

Trump recently directed Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi to seek the public release of sealed grand jury transcripts in the case. One federal judge has denied that request; a second judge has yet to rule.

Vance on Monday visited the factory to promote Trump’s tax cut and border bill, but also addressed the Epstein matter, saying the president wants “full transparency” in the case.

“The president has been very clear. We’re not shielding anything,” Vance said in response to a reporter’s question. “The president has directed the attorney general to release all credible information and, frankly, to go and find additional credible information related to the Jeffrey Epstein case.”

“Some of that stuff takes time,” Vance said, adding that Trump has been “very clear. He wants full transparency.”

Trump had said back in 2019 that Epstein was a fixture in Palm Beach but that the two had had a falling-out a long time ago and he hadn’t spoken with Epstein for 15 years.

Trump on Monday also denied contributing to a compilation of letters and drawings to mark Epstein’s 50th birthday, first reported on by the Wall Street Journal. The newspaper said the letter believed to be from Trump included a drawing of a woman’s body.

“I don’t do drawings of women, that I can tell you,” Trump said.

Superville writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Julie Carr Smyth in Canton, Ohio, contributed to this report.

When you live in war for so long, you have to take comfort in whatever little control you have over your decisions. My city in northwest Ukraine is now just 20km (12 miles) from the front line.

We all know that the front line has been getting closer in recent months. Every two or three days, there are reports that one village, another village and a third village have been occupied.

Cluster munitions have already directly hit the city centre. There are constant sirens, some lasting as long as two whole days. We have got so used to them that we don’t spend the whole time in basements because, over time, people’s minds adapt. We stay outside and continue to live, knowing we are risking our lives, knowing that this coffee might be the last one.

For many families in Sumy, like mine, the critical decision is whether to flee to a safer area. When this is your home, your roots, your loved ones, everything you’ve built – especially if family members aren’t planning to leave – it becomes a very complex decision. My daughter and I are staying put, though she has been sleeping in the hallway for the past few months, feeling safer there than in her bed next to the window. But with the school year now over, some families with the option are leaving the city – for a summer camp, a grandparents’ house – before reassessing the situation. Some have packed up and left for good.

I feel the children’s absence in the classes I facilitate through the local organisation League of Modern Women, supported by Save the Children. One day, a child is enjoying the lessons. The next day, they’re gone. These classes continue bringing joy to children – giving them some sense of normality, moments of joy and a glimpse of a real childhood. For children who have been limited to online learning for months, even years, it is the only opportunity they have to interact with others in person. And they are supporting one another, building resilience.

The classes for small children encourage them to draw, express emotions, feelings and dreams through art and painting. They also play team games and sports and learn mindfulness and breathing techniques to keep calm during crises. With teenagers, we ask them to work together to come up with project ideas to improve their community. For example, one girl wants to create a drama club, and a boy wants a library for Japanese manga comics. We teach them how to write a project proposal, create a budget and offer mentorship. It’s refreshing – and essential – for children to escape and expand their imaginations beyond the reality of war.

This is a reality that is eroding childhoods. The constant sirens have turned a decent night’s sleep – critical for children’s health and development – into a distant memory.

This is a reality that has separated children from their fathers. One girl in my class was in a bad mood for a long time. Finally, she said: “I want to see Dad. He is in military service.”

This is a reality that has kept children from socialising – something parents around the world will remember from the days of the COVID-19 pandemic. One boy, whose only interaction with other children for a long time was through a computer screen, started my classes struggling to communicate with others. Gradually, he has come out of his shell. Many children have had to say goodbye to friends on the move, time and again.

In one class, a boy and his friend had a ukulele and wanted to sing for everyone. We said, “Of course, go ahead!” These were fourth-graders – nine- and 10-year-olds. They stood up, started playing and singing, and their classmates turned off the lights and lit up their phone flashlights. They transformed our shelter classroom into a concert hall for five minutes. It was such a joy to see them enjoying life, even if just for a few moments in a city under attack.

For me, that makes my decision to stay in Sumy worthwhile. We cannot abandon the families and children here. Children need hope – and that is what our classes give. You could leave Sumy, and something could happen somewhere else. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a border city or the capital – moving in Ukraine is like playing the lottery. Safety is not guaranteed.

For those of us who have made the decision to stay, every day the significance of that choice becomes clearer. If we all left, there would be no Sumy – and no one left to protect.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

The ceasefire between Israel and Iran is already showing signs of strain – and has triggered frustration, and a televised expletive, from United States President Donald Trump, who accused Israel of undermining the deal just hours after its announcement.

The ceasefire, brokered by the US and Qatar, came into effect late Monday following days of intensive missile barrages between the two foes. Israel’s last wave of strikes targeted Iranian military infrastructure near Isfahan, prompting retaliatory drone launches by Tehran.

Iran violated the ceasefire, “but Israel violated it too”, Trump told reporters on the White House’s South Lawn on Tuesday as he departed for the NATO summit.

“So I’m not happy with them. I’m not happy with Iran either. But I’m really unhappy if Israel is going out this morning.”

“I’ve got to get Israel to calm down,” he said. “Israel, as soon as we made the deal, they came out and dropped a load of bombs, the likes of which I’ve never seen before.”

As he prepared to head to a NATO summit in The Hague in the Netherlands, Trump’s anger flared on the White House Lawn: “We have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the f*** they’re doing.”

A day earlier, Trump boasted on his Truth Social app that “the Ceasefire is in effect!”

“ISRAEL is not going to attack Iran. All planes will turn around and head home, while doing a friendly ‘Plane Wave’ to Iran. Nobody will be hurt,” Trump wrote.

Trump’s unusually public display of anger at Israel saw the US leader apparently trying to force his ally to call off warplanes in real time on Tuesday.

Earlier the same morning, he had posted on Truth Social: “ISRAEL. DO NOT DROP THOSE BOMBS” – without it being clear which bombs he was referring to.

“IF YOU DO IT IS A MAJOR VIOLATION. BRING YOUR PILOTS HOME, NOW!”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seemed to quickly accede, with his office saying in a statement on Tuesday that Israel still carried out one more attack near Tehran after Trump’s appeal, but is refraining from “further strikes”.

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz had said earlier on Tuesday that he had ordered the military to mount new strikes on targets in Tehran in response to what he claimed were Iranian missiles fired in a “blatant violation” of the ceasefire.

Iran denied launching any missiles and said Israel’s attacks had continued for an hour and a half beyond the time the ceasefire was meant to start.

For his part, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that his country would not fire at Israel if it was not fired upon, but that a “final decision on the cessation of our military operations will be made later”.

Despite the rocky start, Trump voiced support for the ceasefire itself, clarifying he is not seeking regime change in Iran, after some mixed messaging in recent days, and insisting that the ceasefire remains in effect.

If it holds, the truce would be a big political win for Trump in the wake of his risky gamble to send US bombers over the weekend to attack three nuclear facilities in Iran that Israel and the United States claim were being used to build an atomic bomb in secret.

US intelligence and the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog had previously recorded no indication Iran was developing a nuclear weapon.

Reporting from Tehran, Al Jazeera’s Ali Hashem said Iranian officials appeared to welcome Trump’s remarks, viewing them as a potential opening for diplomatic engagement.

“It might give the impression that Trump is serious about this ceasefire,” Hashem said.

In Washington, Al Jazeera’s Phil Lavelle, said Trump is feeling “quite annoyed” at and perhaps “betrayed” by Netanyahu violating the ceasefire.

“He was angry with both Israel and Iran. But you could really tell some of the extra anger there, the extra fury was aimed at Israel,” Lavelle said.

The US leader had said the truce would be a phased 24-hour process beginning at about 04:00 GMT Tuesday, with Iran unilaterally halting all operations first. He said Israel would follow suit 12 hours later.

Israel has been bombing Iran in an offensive that began June 13. The US joined the attack with a mission starting overnight Friday to Saturday against the deeply-buried and hard-to-access Fordow complex and two other sites.

Iranian officials say more than 400 people have been killed in air strikes. Retaliatory missile strikes have killed 28 people in Israel, the first time large numbers of Iranian missiles have penetrated – and on a daily basis – its much vaunted air defence systems, which mainly the US has provided.

I wasn’t expecting a painting of a naked clown to greet me when I FaceTimed Demetri Martin on a Monday afternoon in May. After the longest two seconds of my life, the comedian appeared in front of the camera with an unassuming smile.

For the past few months, Martin has been toiling away in the studio shed designed by his wife, interior designer Rachael Beame Martin, in the backyard of their Beverly Glen home. Lush greenery peeks through the windows above a lattice he constructed to mount canvases of various sizes. His first solo exhibition of paintings and drawings is just days away and he has some finishing touches to make.

Visual art is not new to Martin, a wiz at one-liners who incorporates drawings in his stand-up.

“The cool thing about a drawing is I can share something personal and I can use a graphic to illustrate it more specifically,” he says in “Demetri Deconstructed,” his 2024 Netflix special. In one graph from the special, he plots the inverse relationship between the amount of “past” and “future” time across an individual’s lifespan. The point where “past” and “future” meet is the mid-life existential crisis.

There is a synergy between Martin’s jokes and his sketches, which are more akin to doodles than drawings. Their humor lies in their pared-down specificity. They “make you ponder something on the absurdity-of-life level, which I guess is comedy,” says Martin’s close friend and musician Jack Johnson.

“I brought visual art into my stand-up comedy,” says Demetri Martin. “Can I bring comedy into the visual art world?”

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

With his love of joke crafting, Martin says he represents the comedy old guard as stand-up has become heavily autobiographical in today’s internet age.

“Specifically, it’s jokes that have always attracted me when we’re talking about the comedy world,” Martin says of his aversion to storytelling. “Can you do a joke in 12 words? Can you get an idea across? How much can you take away and it still lands with people?”

“Acute Angles,” Martin’s solo exhibition running Sunday to May 31, takes his obsession with constraint a step further. The experiment: Can you communicate jokes visually without any words?

“I brought visual art into my stand-up comedy,” says Martin, who worked on paintings for two-plus years before he figured he had enough material to fill a gallery. “Can I bring comedy into the visual art world?”

“Acute Angles” — he says the title references the shape of his nose — features large-scale paintings with a unifying color palette of bright red, sky blue and medium gray, in addition to 30 smaller drawings. The paintings depict implausible scenarios: What if the grim reaper slipped on a banana on his way to kill you? What if Superman ripped his underpants on his quest to save you?

The show is a collaboration with his wife, whom he adoringly describes as the muscles of the operation. The two secured a month-long lease of an abandoned yoga studio tucked behind a California Pizza Kitchen in Brentwood. Using her design skills — they met in New York City when she was attending Parsons School of Design and he was pursing comedy — Beame Martin led a rebuild of the studio-turned-gallery.

When Martin’s publicist called to ask if the gallery had a name, the couple turned to Google. They eventually came up with “Laconic Gallery,” for Laconia, Greece, where Martin traces his roots, and because the word laconic perfectly describes Martin’s ethos: marked by the use of few words.

Demetri Martin describes his wife, Rachael Beame Martin, as the muscles of the operation.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

On the day of our interview, Martin is completing the last of 12 paintings for the show and is puzzled why the paint appears differently on the canvas than in the can. He’s trying hard to ensure the color of the naked clown’s pubic hair matches his hair.

The relationship between the viewer and the art is both exciting and scary to Martin. When taking a comedy show on the road, you more or less know your jokes will land, he says. With an art show, there’s more of a vacuum between him and the audience, yet the conceit remains: the show is meant to be funny.

But whether viewers laugh while visiting the art exhibition almost doesn’t matter. For Martin, the reward has been the process of creation — the meditative zone he sinks into, indie rock oozing from his CD player, as he envisions and re-envisions the work. (Many of the paintings in the show are derived from old sketches.)

The show also represents Martin’s re-emergence from his own mid-life existential crisis. At 51, he is older than his dad was when he died and about the same age as his late mom, when she was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. “So now, is this like bonus time for me?” he started to ask himself in his late 40s.

In some ways, Martin has always been a tortured artist. After graduating from Yale, he attended NYU Law only to drop out after the second year. But New York City is also where he found himself, spending late nights at the Comedy Cellar and the Boston Comedy Club. His days were spent visiting the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Daydreaming his way through the galleries, jotting jokes in his notepad, is when he first gained an appreciation for the arts.

“He’s not without cynicism once you know him, but where comics so often lead with cynicism, he has this wide-eyed openness, and I think that’s a thread that pulls through all of his work,” says comedian and fellow Comedy Central alum Sarah Silverman.

Demetri Martin’s first solo art exhibition is a collaboration with his wife, Rachael Beame Martin.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Now, Martin is a father to an 8-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son — the same age he was when manning his Greek family’s shish kebab stand on the Jersey Shore. His self-described anger at seeing the world his kids are growing up in, namely their peers’ obsessions with cell phones, seeps into his paintings and drawings. But ultimately, being a father has irrevocably improved Martin’s perspective on life.

“I think sometimes resignation is also acceptance,” he says, on his new appreciation of midlife. “You’re still motivated, but maybe not in the same way. … You still want to make things, but maybe it doesn’t matter as much, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter. So that’s where I feel like I’m at, where I’m saying, ‘You know what, I’m grateful.’ I understand how lucky I’ve been now.”

He’s not quite done with touring but “Acute Angles” represents a potential escape. If his comedy can travel without him, if he can make money while foregoing lonely nights on the road, he can prioritize more important moments, like playing catch with his son after school. After all, his kids aren’t at the age yet where they hate him — a joke his kids don’t like.

Still, Martin’s art-making mirrors his joke-writing. It’s a numbers game, meticulously filling notebooks in handwriting Silverman describes as “tiny letters all perfectly the same size,” then revisiting and sharpening material until the joke emerges, like a vision.

“It’s really a privilege to have the kind of career where I can try something like this,” Martin says. “I don’t take that for granted anymore.”

There’s an oft-repeated Disneyland creation myth: Artist and animation art director Herb Ryman was given 48 hours to draw an early, heavily detailed and romanticized map of the theme park, which would be used to help sell the project to investors. Although that’s all true, Ryman’s work — one of the most famous and important Disneyland drawings — was far from the first map of Disneyland, as it is often colloquially referred to.

Ryman’s work was in fact an iteration of sorts, based upon years of master planning from Walt Disney and early collaborator Marvin Davis, a cinematic art director responsible for much of Disneyland’s early designs. Some never-before-seen work of Davis and other Disneyland designers will be unearthed in the new book “The Happiest Place On Earth,” from animation producer Don Hahn and theme park designer Christopher Merritt. Both Hahn and Merritt have over the years morphed into theme-park historians, and the book is being released July 15 to coincide with Disneyland’s 70th anniversary.

“Marvin Davis claimed that, as he sat there, probably in a room by himself at the studio with Walt standing over him poking him in the shoulder, he did 133 revisions of these maps to get to the Disneyland layout by 1955,” Merritt says. “A few of these maps have been shown before but a lot of these have not been seen before.”

The archives at Walt Disney Imagineering, the secretive division of the company responsible for theme-park experiences. Found in the archives were multiple maps from Marvin Davis that explore Disneyland’s roots.

(Walt Disney Co.)

The book will trace the development of Disneyland, starting in the early ’50s when Disney flirted with the idea of placing the park next to the studio in Burbank — concepts drawn by Harper Goff — to many of Davis’ gradual advancements of the theme-park form. Study them, and they reveal how many of Disneyland’s core ideas were in place by the early 1950s, although they morphed. Alice in Wonderland, for instance, was once envisioned as a walk-through attraction, to be placed across the way from an archery in Fantasyland.

Hahn makes the case that many of the early seeds for Disneyland were planted during a 1948 trip that Disney and animator Ward Kimball took to Chicago. There, the two attended the Chicago Railroad Fair, which had, among its attractions, Abraham Lincoln reenactments and a re-creation of a frontier town.

“His first memo he did when he got home from the Chicago Railroad Fair was all about trying to create these certain regions,” Hahn says. “If you look at the early Burbank parks, there was a western village, there was a stagecoach, there was a railroad station, there was a Tom Sawyer-ish island. A lot of those things came from the Railroad Fair.”

And there was a lot of early experimentation and many a discarded idea. One of Merritt’s favorite rejected concepts was a Tomorrowland exhibition dedicated to hunting for uranium. The attraction has been referenced by Disney and others over the years as a “lost” attraction, but “The Happiest Place on Earth” will feature some never-before-seen concept art from Imagineer Claude Coats.

“Uranium Hunt was an attraction strangely enough to be placed in Tomorrowland, although Claude designed it with Southwestern rock work,” Merritt says. “It was kind of outside rock maze, and the idea was they would hand you Geiger counters, and there was going to be real radioactive uranium embedded in the rock work that you would measure. In the end, they would give you a souvenir uranium to take home with you, which is just crazy-pants.”

Not all of the early Disneyland ideas are as outlandish. What follows are a few of the maps — and some early designs — that led to what would become Disneyland as we know it today.

Early sketches reveal an opera house, general store and more

A Harper Goff-drawn concept for a Disney theme park in Burbank. This is believed to have been drawn in 1951.

(Walt Disney Co.)

An early 1950s sketch layout of Disneyland, focusing on merchandising outlets.

(Walt Disney Co.)

Disney first considered a theme park across from its studios in Burbank, land that is today occupied by Walt Disney Animation Studios and the West Coast headquarters of ABC. The idea, in its early conceptions, included much of what would later make its way to Disneyland — a train, a steamboat and less detailed versions of Main Street and a Frontierland.

Of particular note here is the second photo, unearthed in “The Happiest Place on Earth” for the first time. The focus is on merchandising locations, but those who study the image will spy an opera house and a general store, believed to be the first time such concepts appear. There’s also a spaceport, a haunted house and a re-creation of London’s Tower Bridge. Shops are said to be themed to properties such as “Cinderella” and “Pinocchio.”

“It shows the holistic thinking, too, of not just the attractions but commerce,” Hahn says. “Where the stores would be, where the cafes would be, and kind of a guest-experience mentality. That was a real theme-park innovation, where you’re transported in time to Frontierland but the food and the costumes add up to Frontierland as well. You see the beginnings of that in a map like this.”

The beginnings of Frontierland and the Storybook Land Canal Boats

An early Disneyland map drawn by Marvin Davis. This map was likely drawn around 1953.

(Walt Disney Co.)

These early Disneyland schematics from Davis begin to capture Disneyland’s “hub” idea, that is, a central area that leads to and from its themed spaces. There’s a large theater space, believed to be designed in the hopes of Disneyland becoming a television production locale, and a significant plot dedicated to a river with surrounding attractions — the map calls for a space for otters, as well as a swamp area.

The Frontierland concept is still present, complete with a pony ranch and a stagecoach, as is a haunted house and a land themed to miniatures, a concept that would ultimately become the Storybook Land Canal Boats. Merritt notes that this design is location-agnostic, as Anaheim had not yet been decided upon for Disneyland.

Of particular note here is an introductory land like a Main Street, U.S.A., leading to a central hub. “These maps are revelatory when you look at them all in sequence,” Merritt says.

Davis’ early maps also highlight a residential street with large Victorian homes. The second image, in particular, mentions a town hall and a church. Hahn and Merritt believe this land was heavily influenced by the look and tone of “Lady and the Tramp.”

Main Street starts to materialize

An early Harper Goff design that influenced the look of Frontierland.

(Walt Disney Co.)

Some early Harper Goff designs for what would become Disneyland.

(Walt Disney Co.)

Early Disneyland concept art from Harper Goff

(Walt Disney Co.)

These, says Merritt, are a selection 1951 drawings from Harper Goff. The work is exploratory, in that it could have been envisioned for multiple parts of the park. While Goff’s impact on Frontierland is well documented — and Hahn notes, perhaps, an influence from Knott’s Berry Farm’s Ghost Town in these images — it’s also believed some of these designs were kicked around as a potential Main Street, U.S.A., concept.

Main Street, says Hahn, is often noted as being largely influenced by Disney’s time as a child in Marceline, Mo. While that isn’t really doubted these days among Disney’s fan base, Hahn says that theory wasn’t arrived upon immediately. He notes that some of Goff’s early concept work has a slight Victorian bent, which Goff drew from both “Lady and the Tramp” and his own childhood.

“It’s really the childhood of nobody,” Hahn says of Main Street. “It’s an idealized America. Goff grew up in Colorado, and a lot of these are his Victorian memories of his Colorado hometown. These are set designers who were bringing their movie chops to Disneyland.”

Welcome to the park’s destination: Anaheim

A pivotal early Disneyland map drawn by Marvin Davis.

(Walt Disney Co. )

Merritt and Hahn believe this third early schematic of Disneyland from Davis — the drawing is undated — is perhaps the first to envision Anaheim as the park’s destination. The image needs only to be rotated and one can see many of the pieces that would comprise the park — a Main Street, a central hub and, for the first time since Goff’s drawings of the Burbank park, a train that encircles the grounds.

Zoom in, and one will see there’s a large “emporium” to greet guests — and shoppers — on Main Street, U.S.A., as well as a castle-like moat to mark the entrance to Fantasyland. Still present are TV production spaces at the front of the park, and the map lists a host of attractions, including a horse-drawn carriage, train rides and boat rides.

Maps begin to show the Disneyland attractions we know today

A fall 1953 map of Disneyland from Marvin Davis.

(Walt Disney Co.)

A September 1953 map of Disneyland from Marvin Davis.

(Walt Disney Co.)

A September 1953 map of Disneyland from Marvin Davis.

(Walt Disney Co.)

These three Davis maps are from September 1953, made just days apart. The bottom drawing is a bit more simplified, as it was designed to be shown to TV networks and financiers. One can see a ride inspired by Disney’s “True-Life Adventures” on the right side of the park. This would ultimately become the Jungle Cruise and be flipped to the left side of the park.

All three maps, however, were instrumental in the final design of Disneyland, envisioning Anaheim as the ultimate destination. Of note in the middle image is a Recreation Land, home to a ball field, a mini-golf course and a bandstand. At this time, Disneyland was still envisioned as housing a circus, a concept that was explored in the actual park after opening but soon discarded. Yet Fantasyland, a Land of Tomorrow, Frontierland and what would become Adventureland are all present.

Fantasyland is home in these drawings to attractions themed to “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” “Peter Pan,” “Alice in Wonderland,” Pinocchio” (denoted as Pleasure Island) and “Fantasia.” Also present is what would become Autopia, signifying that Disneyland in late 1953 had many of its early attractions solidified. Still, many, such as a Mother Goose area, would pop-up and then disappear from the maps.

Says Merritt, “You’re going to want to get your magnifying glass to look at some of this stuff.”