I admit it. I’m one of those people who gaze upward with my mouth open when I’m in the Big Apple. But I’m not looking at the height of the buildings.  I’m usually looking at the fabulous architectural details that are often just above eye level. The things we miss when we scurry by in our too-hurried world.

So riding home on the train from last week’s auction, I was taken with an article in USA Today about the new interest in artwork created during the Great Depression of the 1930s. This art was subsidized by the federal government as part of the overall Works Progress Administration (WPA); there were wall-sized murals in post offices, train stations and libraries, as well as sculptures and other design work. As the years went by, most of the art was forgotten, some sadly destroyed as buildings were demolished, others paneled over, and many others still there but just not noticed because we forgot to “gaze upward” just above eye level.  The article went on to describe how there is a new interest in this art (now 80 years old!) and the efforts being made to preserve that which remains.

So, again, I come back to doll collecting. Because doll collectors-in-the-know have been aware of the WPA art works for some time. Specifically, WPA dolls.  In regions throughout the country, from Michigan to Kansas to Wisconsin to Louisiana, 1930s artists were given employment by the government with the commission of creating dolls to represent American culture.  Made of wood, cloth and paper mache, the dolls were folk art in its truest sense – art of the folk – veritable cultural icons, and proudly exhibited in schools, museums and libraries.

But the years passed. And the exhibits were taken down. The dolls were sometimes stored and sometimes given away or simply disappeared.  Where are these dolls now? Some are in the hands of astute collectors who recognize their artistic and historic values. And some are in the holdings of museums such as the Louisiana State Archives which holds 31 different examples. What an important project for a doll researcher to assemble an inventory and location of all-known existing WPA dolls! And, in case there is such an inventory that I don’t know about, please tell me and I’ll pass that information along here.  

Two weeks ago I received a mailing about a new museum to be built in Washington D.C. The museum is The National Women’s History Museum. There was this quote in the mailing that really struck me. “Women have been pioneers in science, education, law, the arts, government and so many other aspects of the American story. But far too often their achievements have not been recorded, properly recognized or passed down. And as any historian will attest, if something hasn’t been recorded it’s as if it never happened at all.”

This arrived to me at the same time I was cataloging Session II of the Nikki Kvitka Collection. That’s the session that includes the group of dolls designed by American women – Georgene Averill, Grace Storey Putnam, Helen Jensen, and Rose O’Neill. And I started to realize how little we know of these women whose artistic talents figured in our American social history.

Take Helen Jensen, for example. Urban legend in the doll world has always just vaguely noted that she was from Seattle and the doll was a portrait of her daughter. But digging on the web, in preparation for cataloging the Gladdie doll in the Kvitka collection, I found these facts: Helen Jensen was actually born in Chicago at the tail-end of the 1800s, she studied at the renown Art Institute of Chicago, and in 1928, Helen Webster Jensen moved with her husband to Santa Monica in California. There, for the next several decades, she worked in partnership with her husband, creating bronze sculptures for gardens and parks of Southern California, some of which still stand today. (I even found a newspaper clipping with a photograph of her in her sculpture studio). It was only in her later retired years that she moved to Seattle and – I can’t believe this – died only in 1990. Which means that as recently as 20 years ago, we in the doll world could have paid personal homage to this artistic and talented women.  And we missed our chance.

As for the part of the story about Gladdie being a doll modeled after the daughter of Helen Jensen? If anyone can offer facts on this it would be interesting to know. Until then it remains just an urban legend.  See why we need The National Women’s History Museum? And here’s a link to their website: www.nwhm.org.