On June 28, more than a hundred people gathered at The National Museum of Toys and Miniatures for the opening reception of the “Portraits of Childhood: Black Dolls from the Collection of Deborah Neff” exhibit, which will be available for viewing till March of 2025.
The purpose of the exhibition is to explore “themes of race, gender, and identity through 135 handmade Black dolls dating from around 1850 to 1940 as well as almost 60 period photographs and paintings depicting dolls posed alongside both children and adults,” according to the Toys and Miniatures Museum’s website.
As people entered the museum, mingling and enjoying refreshments, a small xylophone was played to garner attention and indicate the beginning of opening remarks.
Petra Kralickova, the Executive Director of the Toys and Miniatures Museum, began the event listing the brief facts of the exhibit and thanked the donors, curators, advisory group and interpretation writers. Following Kralickova’s remarks, a member of the exhibition’s advisory group gave a speech.
Natasha Ria El-Scai, Director of the Women’s Center at UMKC and local art gallery owner, prompted questions to the audience: who owns the dolls, who made them, where has this history been, can we love and despise in the same breath? She went on to express appreciation for the work and noted that the exhibition was not a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion check mark for the museum.
“Understanding was established,” Ria El-Scari said. “I enjoyed working with the staff too. They did much more listening than explaining and that was significant.”
The Museum became aware of Deborah Neff’s collection several years ago when an exhibition with the dolls was done at the Mingei International Museum in San Diego. From then on, curators at the museum thought it was a “fabulous collection,” and followed the dolls from exhibition to exhibition until they were able to secure them for display in Kansas City.
“The closest they had ever been was Davenport, Iowa at the Figge Museum of Art,” Amy McKune, Curator/Senior Manager of Collections at the Toys and Miniatures Museum, said. “We wanted to bring them to our region so that people could see it here.”
When McKune and Madeline Rislow, Curator/Senior Manager of Learning and Engagement at the Toys and Miniatures Museum, visited Neff to view the collection and discuss plans for the exhibit, Neff had a requirement in order to do the loan. That requirement was that the exhibit have either an education or publication component. The museum did both, setting up the event as a learning lab for attendees.
In the exhibit there were no labels telling participants how to look at the dolls, aimed at avoiding influencing the viewer. As the museum continued into development, with the framework of the Museum not telling people how to judge the exhibit, it prioritized foregrounding the voices of African-American women.
Five people, who all said yes, were tasked with being a part of an advisory group — which provided a lot of advice on how to market and present the exhibit, ultimately resulting in the implementation of a reflection area, the display of the collector’s statement in the exhibit and spaces where people could go for a respite if needed.
Another crucial aspect added to the exhibit via the advisory group was the involvement from members of the community in writing interpretation labels.
“The advisory group helped us identify people to reach out to in the community and what they ended up producing for us, we thought, was so wonderful because it presents a variety of perspectives,” McKune said. “It really gives some personal insights from several different individuals to the collection and [overall] exhibit.”
Sheri Hall, a Black interpretation writer for the exhibit, spoke to the Telegraph about her experience seeing the dolls on display for the first time in-person.
“It’s visceral,” Hall said. “They feel like friends. It’s really a beautiful experience, but you still ask who are the makers of these dolls? Who do these dolls belong to? Where have they been?”
As people walked around the exhibit, they looked intently at the dolls and many guests drew varying experiences and opinions. While some found the exhibition to be “fascinating” and “intriguing” others found it to be “overwhelming” and “jarring”.
Crystal McIntosh, a Black local dollmaker that goes by @kaycustoms, found the exhibit to be emotional yet empowering.
“Our dolls have come a long way,” McIntosh said. “You can feel the energy off the dolls. I’m a little overwhelmed.”
After the event, the Telegraph interviewed Deborah Neff, the collector of the dolls in the exhibit, and asked why she chooses to share the dolls with others.
“I like that you use the word “share” instead of “show” because children’s first lessons in sharing are often with dolls. The word “share” is also well chosen because it implies that people leave the exhibit with something they did not enter with, maybe a memory or an emotion triggered by the dolls or perhaps a sense of wonder,” Neff said. “For me, sharing the dolls is also an opportunity to see them through other people’s eyes, by observing their reactions to the dolls and listening to their thoughts.”
Although Neff’s collecting of dolls has slowed down, she still keeps an eye out for dolls that can bring something new to the collection. The current exhibit at the National Museum of Toys and Miniatures in Kansas City features a number of dolls that were not previously exhibited.
As the months progress, the museum will be hosting “lunch and learns,” providing a platforms for those interested in discussing various aspects of the exhibit, and a symposium in February with the hopes that the best research collected will go into a book published by a University Press.
Learn more about the exhibit and The National Museum of Toys and Miniatures at toyandminiaturemuseum.org
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