I walked through the candy-pink door that has magically appeared between Chimera and the Tulsa Violin Shop, and there she was: Golden Dream Barbie, with her body-skimming gold lamé jumpsuit, her weird translucent cape-slash-skirt, and her volumized blond hair, plumped up with strands of metal that made it actually hold a curl.
How long had it been since I’d thought about her? About being her? Since I was, like, six years old?
It was incredible to see that Farrah Fawcett bitch again. Likewise: Western Winking Barbie, a personal favorite whom I always thought of as a lost Mandrell sister, and whose left blue-eyeshadowed eyelid always got drunkenly stuck halfway down when I pressed the button to make it wink.
At the Vintage Barbie Museum Pop-Up, curated by J. D. Houchens and Karl Jones and open through January, you too can reconnect with your childhood self—and with the many selves represented in the world of Barbie. Like any icon, she contains multitudes, and the collection on display here shows more than a hundred of them, from the very first Barbie (1959) in her iconic black and white swimsuit to Barbies in Yves Saint Laurent-inspired dresses, Diahann Carroll-esque gowns, ’60s mod fashions, ‘80s workout wear, and even lingerie (complete with a tiny working garter belt). Displayed in groups in glass-fronted cases, the dolls—Barbies, Christies, Kens, even a Midge and an Allan—read like a timelapse of American cultural life.
When I signed up for a guided tour, I was expecting a basic walkthrough of the collection, which Houchens has assembled over three decades. I wasn’t expecting what all the tour turned out to be: a two-hour full-immersion experience that involved a glass of wine, interactive elements, personal stories, a touch of sociopolitical discourse, and engrossing shelf-by-shelf detail about the dolls, their history and their impact.
Houchens kicked things off by telling us about his own journey as a collector, and Jones followed up with his own Barbie story. A skeptic weaned on second wave feminist critiques and first-hand experience in the world of children’s toy licensing, Jones was brought up short when the guy he’d just started dating (Houchens) uttered the words “I collect Barbies.” Cue a spirit of curiosity that resulted in the two co-curating an entire exhibit about Ken, who has his own fascinating history, at the Sherwin Miller Museum of Jewish Art last year. They’ve struck gold again with the Vintage Barbie Museum, where, as Jones said, “the two of us together have gone on this journey of presenting J. D.'s meticulous and beautifully built collection in ways that I think keep the stories going and growing.”