EPCOT’s very popular is upon us Festival of the Arts Credit: Courtesy photo
The “s” in “Arts” does some heavy lifting in the name of this festival, alluding to a generous, big-tent definition of art that includes sidewalk chalk, acrobats and cookies decorated as paint palettes. EPCOT’s annual Festival of the Arts is unlikely
to induce Stendhal Syndrome in any members of your party — there will be no Rembrandts or Rothkos on hand to dazzle.

Instead, this is an arts festival of the sip-and-savor, stroll-and-shop school, a form that Disney has perfected.  Eat-and-drink stations (dubbed “Food Studios”) serving Mondrian-inspired cake slices and wearable popcorn buckets abound. There’s a paint-by-numbers mural for kids to fill in; mini-stages built for family selfies; and plenty of limited-edition merchandise for sale, like a “Fruity Fig Bar Figment Disney Munchling”: a berry-scented stuffed plush toy resembling Disney’s dragon mascot reimagined as a fig-bar cookie. (Conceptual art of the highest degree!)

Related

Not to mention, concerts of songs from Disney musicals and of course, working artists in booths selling renditions of Disney characters in every imaginable medium: oil paint, collage, pastel, textile and more.

As Walt himself once purportedly quipped, “I don’t know if it’s art, but I know I like it.”

Through Feb. 24 at EPCOT, 200 Epcot Center Drive, Lake Buena Vista; entry included with park admission.

[location-1]
Subscribe to Orlando Weekly newsletters.

Follow us: Apple News | Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | Or sign up for our RSS Feed

This article appears in Jan 15-21, 2025.

Jessica Bryce Young has been working with Orlando Weekly since 2003, serving as copy editor, dining editor and arts editor before becoming editor in chief in 2016.