The Stettheimer Dollhouse is a two-story, twelve-room dollhouse, created by Carrie Walter Stettheimer (1869-1944) over the course of two decades, from 1916 to 1935. It contains miniature art made for the dollhouse by artists like

Marcel Duchamp Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, , ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, and conceptual art. Duchamp is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso ...

Alexander Archipenko Alexander Porfyrovych Archipenko (also referred to as Olexandr, Oleksandr, or Aleksandr; uk, Олександр Порфирович Архипенко, Romanized: Olexandr Porfyrovych Arkhypenko; February 25, 1964) was a Ukrainian and American ...

George Bellows George Wesley Bellows (August 12 or August 19, 1882 – January 8, 1925) was an American realist painter, known for his bold depictions of urban life in New York City. He became, according to the Columbus Museum of Art, "the most acclaimed Ame ...

Gaston Lachaise Gaston Lachaise (March 19, 1882 – October 18, 1935) was a French-born sculptor, active in the early 20th century. A native of Paris, he was most noted for his female nudes such as '' Standing Woman''. Gaston Lachaise was taught the refinement o ...

, and

Marguerite Zorach Marguerite Zorach (née Thompson; September 25, 1887 – June 27, 1968) was an American Fauvist painter, textile artist, and graphic designer, and was an early exponent of modernism in America. She won the 1920 Logan Medal of the Arts. Early lif ...

History

Carrie and her sisters Florine and Henrietta (Ettie) lived with their mother Rosetta in New York City; Florine was an artist and Ettie an author, and the family attracted a celebrated group of artists, writers, and critics during the first half of the twentieth century. Carrie was inspired to begin her dollhouse in 1916; during their summer vacation in upstate New York, the sisters (and other upper-class visitors to Lower Saranac) contributed items to a fund-raising bazaar to benefit local children affected by a polio epidemic. Using wooden boxes from a grocer, Carrie created a dollhouse with found objects and scraps. When the family returned home to New York City, Carrie began her own dollhouse.

Art Collection

Perhaps the most notable feature of the dollhouse is its art collection. Many of the Stettheimers' artist friends made tiny copies of their paintings and sculptures for the dollhouse;

, for example, made a miniature copy of his ''Nude Descending a Staircase''. Other artists who created works for the Dollhouse include

, and

. Even in death the Stettheimers attracted artists; Pop artist

Andy Warhol Andy Warhol (; born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director, and producer who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationsh ...

wrote about the Stettheimers in his 1980 book ''Popism: the Warhol '60s''. "Florine Stettheimer was a wealthy primitive painter, a friend of Marcel Duchamp’s, who’d had a one-woman show at the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of t ...

in 1946, and her sister Carrie had made some fabulous dollhouses icthat I loved at the Museum of the City of New York."

Museum of the City of New York

After her mother's death in 1935, Carrie stopped working on the dollhouse and some rooms were left unfinished. Her sister Ettie (who survived both Florine and Carrie) donated the dollhouse to the

Museum of the City of New York A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make these ...

in 1945; she arranged the unfinished rooms (the Art Gallery or Ballroom and the Dining Room) as she thought her sister would have wanted them. The dollhouse is about 28 inches tall, 50 inches long, and 35 inches wide.

References

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Bibliography

*Clark, Sheila W. 2009. ''The Stettheimer dollhouse''. San Francisco: Pomegranate. *Museum of the City of New York. 1947. ''The Stettheimer doll's house''. *Noble, John. 1976. ''A fabulous dollhouse of the twenties: the famous Stettheimer dollhouse at the Museum of the City of New York''. New York: Dover Publications.

External links

Louis Bouché, The Stettheimer Dollhouse and Mama’s Boy

(an exhibit at Yale University's Beinecke Library that includes a photograph of Carrie Stettheimer taken on October 8, 1932) Dollhouses