The Stettheimer Dollhouse: In A New Light
Design Team: Rayna Weingord; Photographs courtesy Brad FarwellPress: “the 28-inch-tall mansion will have a new lighting system, an airier vitrine, brand-new high-resolution photographs to help visitors pick out details like the handmade mahjong tiles — and, perhaps most important, brighter, cleaner surfaces.” The New York Times
The latest iteration of the Museum’s iconic dollhouse celebrates its history and highlights recent restoration work through interactive, design-forward display. On near-constant display for 75 years, this piece has been reimagined to invite engagement through layered storytelling and bring visitors up close to its intricate interior. A focus of this new design is a life-sized recreation of select rooms from the dollhouse, where visitors can stage magnetic replicas of dolls—created by a curator to activate the dollhouse in the 1970s—to create their own scenes. This tactile, immersive environment encourages play, storytelling, and exploration of the social context and artistic detail embedded in the original piece.