The Mad Collector in the Basement; Established Doll Museums

Recently, I learned of a program to be given at a future doll convention. It purports to tell us all how to start a doll museum. Key points are that the museum is in someone’s basement, with a separate entrance. Hmm. To create our 5000 sq. foot doll and toy museum took twenty years and lots of paper filings with the state and federal government. We had to find a building, and bid on it. We started in a much smaller building and paid rent; I had saved up a year’s rent to cover it. Many of our cases had to be transported two hours from the former Planetary Studies Museum. We had to file for nonprofit status for our building, too. All this took more than a year. We got our permanent building in August 2020. It took a year to set up the dolls and toys, and I’m not done yet. I did this on my own, with my husband helping. He runs his own security company, so doesn’t have the time he’d like to devote to the museum. We get wonderful donations of objects, but not many financial donations. We finance it ourselves, for now. Covid hit when we were in our old building, and only open three months. We had to close. We got no grants, though we applied, no financial help. As for the collection; it’s mine. I started collecting at age three, and never stopped. Really, I’ve been planning it my whole life, with my family helping. They took me to doll museums all over the world. My family has been every where but Antarctica, and my mentor, teacher, and friend, the late Dr. Roald Tweet went there. It counts. Actually, my first “museum” was in a basement, too. My parents’. Dad built it. It took him about a year, and a year before that to build my fantastic red doll house, Plantagenet House. I hear lot of people talking about doll museums in their house, in a basement, within a retail shop, in a garage. I hear about “established doll museums.” When I googled the term, our museum came up. We have toys, games, doll houses, dolls, books, models and puppets representing Prehistory to the present, and we are here to preserve and to educate, not to invest, sell, or make money. Below are some pictures of the “museum” Dad built. pBefore I had to pack and move my core collection, the dolls were organized by size, material, age, country, and type. There were toys, doll houses, art, books, and paper dolls. Doll related art hung on the walls. I hope to do a podcast soon.

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