The Great Exhibition: Bébés at the Barry

The Barry Art Museum at Old Dominion University in Virginia USA,  features three major collections: Fine Art Paintings, Glass, Historic Dolls and Automata.  The Barry Museum’s doll collection spans three centuries of fashion and culture, the dolls are exhibited alongside great works of art challenging the viewer to see the doll in terms of art and the society that created them. 

The Barry Art  Museum's guest Curator Sara Woodbury joins host Louisa Maxwell to discuss the  Barry’s latest exhibition exploring the story of the French Bébé dolls. Made in the likeness of idealised children with finely sculpted bisque heads and composition or leather, bodies, these dolls were dressed in the finest French fashions.     French doll makers: Jumeau, Bru, Steiner, André Thuillier and Huret competed to create the most luxurious and innovative Bébés.  Sara Woodbury gives us a guided tour through the exhibition and insight into what these dolls reveal about the society and culture of the late nineteenth century.