The Suffolk County Historical Society is excited to announce a new, captivating exhibit, Black History Through the Eyes of Dolls, opening on Wednesday, February 4, 2015, at 10:00 a.m. This historical collection of African American dolls is on loan from the private collection of Dr. Judith Kronin, an avid doll collector, renowned educator, and author of Creating Smart Schools.
Black History Through the Eyes of Dolls includes nearly two hundred dolls from Dr. Kronin’s collection of 1,500, offering a unique perspective on Black History in America. The exhibit includes dolls from Africa and with African roots, as well as dolls from each era in American history—slavery, reconstruction, the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, the world wars and other military conflicts, the civil rights movement, and forward to the present time. The dolls depict blacks in education, athletics, entertainment, and politics, and they feature such artists as Seymour Mann, Karen Germany, Annette Himstedt, Shirley Housley, Byron Lars, Gloria Tepper, Helen Kish, Robert Toner, Bob Mackie, Maryse Nicole, and Philip Heath. Other highlights of the exhibit include a series of dolls from Byron Lars’s Chapeaux Collection; “Aaron” by Phillip Heath; “Sanga, Pemba, and Medina” by Annette Himstedt; “Bit” by Gloria Tepper; “Louis Satchimo Armstrong” and “Mohammad Ali” by Effanbee—the Legend Series; and “President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama” by Terri Gold.
An avid doll collector, Dr. Kronin’s collection has been featured in exhibits at the African American Museum in Hempstead, the Paterson Museum in New Jersey, and the A. B. Davis Middle School in Mount Vernon. She has lectured at many Long Island libraries on the art of doll collecting and was recently featured on LI Girls Talk, a television program that mentors Long Island youth.
The exhibit will run through March 7, 2015, alongside our Ageless Beauty: Antique Dolls exhibit.
Source: Press release issued by the Suffolk County Historical Society, Feb. 2.
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