Seeking a Sparkle: Coburg Doll Museum's 2,000 Dolls Need a New Shiny Home
Searching for a suitable venue to house around 2,000 doll figures - Display area designed to house approximately 2,000 dolls
Hey there! Some dazzling news on the art scene, mate. Remember the beloved cobweb-filled Coburg Doll Museum that's had to shut its doors? Yep, that one. Well, they've still got about 2,000 dolls just quietly chillin' in storage. The city of Coburg's on a hunt to give these dolls a new purpose, a new home, and a second chance at the limelight.
Chats with various museums are brewing, including those in Sonneberg and Bamberg, as reported by Louay Yassin, the city's PR guru, to German Press Agency. It's all about finding the perfect venue and concept to bring the collection back to life for the public eye.
You might be pondering why these dolls are still lurking around the Kulturfabrik Cortendorf on the outskirts of town. Simple: the city's cultural department is grappling with ways to reintroduce this chunk of exhibits – around 4,000 to be precise – to the public some way, somehow. Seems these dolls lost their gleam a bit since the 1990s, much like our favorite pop divas, eh?
The idea of scattering the collection across various locations has been a topic of discussion for some time. However, the city's lacking museum educators who could whip the collection into shape and stage it for the world. The former museum director's now working at the German Toy Museum in Sonneberg, Thuringia, if you're curious.
Declining visitors and non-barrier-friendly buildings were amongst the reasons behind the Coburg Doll Museum's closure in late 2022. Despite the lack of interest, students still made up a sizable chunk of visitors,enhancing our empathy for those precious little minds eager to learn.
A private foundation initially cropped up to take over the collection and put it on display in Rodental near Coburg. But all that dropped like a lead brick in 2023 due to funding woes. Fret not, fans of these vintage dolls, since May 2024, they've been ringing up the cultural radar at the Kulturfabrik Cortendorf in northeast Coburg.
With dolls and accessories dating back to 1800 to 1960, this collection offers a glimpse into how the bourgeoisie brought up their offspring. Carin and Hans Lossnitzer, a couple from Ettlingen near Karlsruhe, kickstarted the museum in 1987 with their private collection. Since two-thirds of the exhibits originated from North Franconia or South Thuringia, the Munich of toys chose Coburg as the location. The city scooped up the collection and continued to run the museum until the end.
While the new home for these dolls is still up in the air, it's crucial to consider potential locations that offer just the right blend of space, accessibility, preservation, and community engagement to shine this collection in the best light possible. Could it be a nearby museum, a new cultural hub, or perhaps even hidden within the walls of a historic building? Only time will tell, my friends!
The city's community policy discusses potential venues that blend space, accessibility, preservation, and community engagement for the relocation of the 2,000 dolls from the Coburg Doll Museum, aiming to provide a new home and new purpose for them. In this process of finding a suitable place, vocational training may be required to educate the staff responsible for the staging and management of the vintage home-and-garden-themed doll collection.
