One of the rarest Barbie dolls in the world comes to Norfolk

Sep 21, 2023

A basic Barbie doll can retail for as low as $5.95. Newly released dolls modeled on actor Margot Robbie average about $50.

And capitalizing on the blockbuster movie “Barbie,” starring Robbie, which has renewed interest in the iconic doll and infected social media with Barbie fever — symptoms include masses of memes, gobs of GIFs, scads of raving hot takes — the Barry Art Museum at Old Dominion University is opening an exhibition staring a rare, first-edition Barbie purchased at auction for $42,000.

The near mint condition No. 1 Barbie will be a permanent part of the museum’s collection and make its public Norfolk debut Tuesday along with the temporary exhibit “Fashioning Innovation: Madame Alexander at 100,” which examines the life and work of doll industry luminary Beatrice Alexander. It runs through Dec. 31.

“There are a lot of special things about this star Barbie that I thought would be interesting to visitors, and the doll gallery has always brought a lot of visitors to the museum,” said art collector and philanthropist Carolyn Barry.

She and her husband, Richard, co-founded the Barry Art Museum in 2016 as the only art museum in the country with a permanent collection of dolls with origins spanning cultures, continents and centuries.

In particular, the Barry “postures the doll is art,” said its executive director Charlotte Potter Kasic.

Over decades of collecting, Carolyn Barry amassed more than 200 dolls in a personal collection that are now part of the Barry and rotate in and out of the gallery — each doll providing insight and a picture of American life during the era of its creation.

Well-to-do women of the 1800s dressed dolls in miniature dresses to get a sense of what the fashions looked like before spending on orders from Europe. One display illustrates that they ordered doll-sized samples of the latest fashions from Paris.

Nearby, the gallery’s “Parisienne” doll wears a necklace of 24 glimmering Stanhopes — microphotographs, each covered with an enlarging lens, of Paris landmarks. Antoine Edmond Rochard originally crafted the 30-inch tall, French porcelain doll around 1868 with 28 such pairs of images and lenses. Two years later, Parisians relied on pigeons carrying microphotographic messages to communicate with the provinces when the city was besieged by a Prussian army. The Barrys purchased the doll for $333,500 in 2018.

“Every time you collect a doll, you learn its history: who made it, what materials they were using at the time, who was king, who was queen, what was happening in France or what was going on in this country in 1865,” Carolyn Barry said, adding that historic dolls have academic relevance across ODU departments such as fashion, robotics and drama.

Across the gallery, the “Miss Hiroshima (Friendship Doll)” is a reminder of a 1927 goodwill gesture between American and Japanese children. American kids sent 12,700 dolls to Japan, then a newly arisen imperial world power, and in return received 58 exquisite dolls, such as Miss Hiroshima, with skin handcrafted from ground oyster shells from Kyoto and Tokyo.

The original Barbies were also built across the Pacific.

The first Barbie dolls hit American store shelves in 1959 and were made in Japanese factories. But the initial run encountered a couple of kinks. The manufacturer had difficulty perfecting the airbrushing and stenciling to mass-produce Barbie’s face. For the first several weeks, art students were hired to hand paint Barbie’s features.

And the No. 1 Barbie acquired by the Barrys is one of those hand-painted dolls.

She is displayed in the museum in front of her original case, wearing a wedding gown and next to three other outfits — which, even on their own, are considered rare collector’s items, according to Bradley Justice. Justice is a doll consultant who works with auction houses, collectors and museums on the buying and selling of recherché Barbies.

The Barry’s newest Barbie was never meant for play, having been originally sold in 1959 to a toy store as a display item.

“So it came in a special cardboard box that had pink and white silhouettes all over it,” explained Justice, who consulted on the recent acquisition.

Typically such a doll would have been discarded after a couple of years. But it was instead purchased by the original owner’s mother while visiting New York City to attend the Macy’s Easter Parade. A family video helped curators verify its authenticity.

Her three extra outfits were not made after 1959, Justice said. “And the little details and accessories that she has were kind of eliminated as they moved forward.”

One set, the “Easter Parade” outfit, is an apple-printed sheath dress and black silk taffeta coat. Her “Gay Parisienne” look is a blue dress with a fluffy, fur-like collar.

Touting some red and white pinstripes, the “Roman Holiday ” outfit comes with an ultra-rare tiny brass compact with an engraving of Barbie’s initial and a powder puff.

In the display, the makeup case, a small pink comb, white gloves and slippers, a black purse, high heels and a wedding garter form a line at the doll’s feet.

“I mean, it’s the little details that made the doll really special,” Justice said.

Sharing space at the Barry with Barbie — who was invented by Mattel’s co-founder, Ruth Handler — is the perspective on Beatrice Alexander.

Predating Barbie by 36 years, Alexander founded the Madame Alexander Doll Co. in New York City in 1923 when the business of toy making was still a male-dominated industry.

Alexander introduced dolls as licensed characters, such as her line of Cissy dolls which debuted in 1955, four years before Barbie, and using plastic rather than fragile porcelain in representing young women of their time. The dolls came with casual and formal attire.

Alexander always emphasized that dolls should be a part of the world in which children lived and played, said Sara Woodbury, a guest curator for the exhibit and a Ph.D. candidate at William & Mary.

“They’re not existing in some separate sphere where children play disconnected from the concerns of reality or whatnot. They’re very much of their time and place.”

Colin Warren-Hicks, 919-818-8139, [email protected]

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When: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays; 12 to 5 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays; Tuesday through Dec. 31

Where: Barry Art Museum, 1075 W. 43rd St., Norfolk

Tickets: Free

Details: barryartmuseum.odu.edu

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