BETHLEHEM, Pa. — Historic Bethlehem Museums & Sites has put nearly 60 antique dollhouses, some up to 4 feet tall, and more than 6,000 miniatures on view in “Art of the Dollhouse,” a new exhibition that opened Thursday at its Kemerer Museum of Decorative Arts.
Many of the houses come from the Elizabeth Johnston Prime collection, which the nonprofit says was once one of the largest privately owned dollhouse collections in the United States. Prime left it to the nonprofit in 2006, two decades ago: 44 houses and more than 6,000 miniatures made between 1830 and the early 1930s.
The exhibition at 427 N. New St. runs through June 27, 2027. It is open Fridays and Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sundays from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., with extra days and hours during the holiday season starting Friday, Nov. 27, according to the museum’s exhibition page.
General admission is $14 for adults and $7 for children, or $42 for two adults and two children. Docent-led tours at 11:30 a.m., 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. cost $20 for adults and $10 for children. Members get in free.
“This exhibition thoughtfully examines how society, decorative arts, toymaking, and play evolved together over the course of four centuries,” Lindsey Jancay, vice president and managing director of Historic Bethlehem Museums & Sites, said in announcing the show. “Visitors are often surprised to discover how much we can learn about our history from objects we might otherwise dismiss as child’s play.”
The museum says the show includes houses by German makers Christian Hacker, Moritz Gottschalk and Johann Daniel Kestner Jr., along with miniature homes from FAO Schwarz and Silber & Fleming. It lists a late-1800s French villa by Hacker with its original handmade tapestries and an 1895 English townhouse by G&J Lines with an electric chandelier and a working bath fed by a cistern in its roof.
The oldest piece in the Prime collection is the Pennsylvania Cupboard House from 1830, a carpenter-built dollhouse inside a mahogany cabinet that the museum says may have floated down the Allegheny River at one point. The exhibition also has modern work, including the Kaleidoscope House that artist Laurie Simmons designed in 2001.
Among the miniatures, the museum lists a set of Chinese porcelain vases that went down in the Vung Tau Cargo shipwreck around 1690. Divers recovered them about 300 years later.
Docents on the guided tours tell the stories behind some of the best-known pieces, the nonprofit says, including a dollhouse that sold for more than the price of a new car and the so-called “mystery houses.”
“Some of these small pieces tell the biggest stories and with thousands of miniatures to see here, this exhibition has numerous stories to tell,” Jancay said.
The museum also offers Collector’s Hours, adults-only visits before it opens, at 10 a.m. on Friday, Nov. 6, and Friday, Nov. 20, and on five more dates in January and February. Each has 15 reservations, at $30.
Miniaturist Julie Steiner will give a talk, “Dollhouses in Art History,” at 10 a.m. Sunday, Nov. 15. Tickets are $25, or $20 for members.
Limited free parking is in the lot behind the museum, reached from West Wall and North New streets, and the city’s Walnut Street Garage is nearby.
