NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- When New York went into lockdown as the COVID-19 pandemic hit the city, many residents were confined to their homes, isolated from family, friends and colleagues.
As New York-based arts patron and collector Joanna Fisher waited out the lockdown, she came up with the idea for a socially-distanced yet still-collaborative project: a dollhouse filled with rooms furnished by different artists.
The piece that resulted, a “miniature world” dubbed “The Fisher Dollhouse: A Venetian Palazzo in Miniature,” is now on view at the Museum of Arts and Design in Manhattan.
“‘The House Within’ is how I think about this project. A place people can go to in their minds,” Fisher said in a statement. “This was born in the pandemic. An emotional home I found within myself. A safe place created in my imagination. That is how this came to be.”
To kick off the project, Fisher recruited artist friends and collaborators to create “micro-artworks,” the Museum of Arts and Design said in a press release.
The finished piece includes sculptural works by artists including Michele Oka Doner and Dustin Yellin; miniature portraits and works of art created by Peter Gerakaris, Antonio Pio Saracino, Tatyana Murray, Rachel Lee Hovnanian, Darren Waterston, Federico de Francesco, Ryan McGinness and Hunt Slonem; and photography by Veronica Gaido, the release said.
It also includes miniature “antiques and vintage pieces” created by Sue Doviso, Sonia Messer, David Castillo, Mario Ramos, Mariana Grande and Fred Cobbs, according to the release. British set designer Holly Jo Beck crafted the dollhouse itself, the release said.
“For Fisher [the dollhouse] evokes memories of a favorite hotel, the Gritti Palace, built as a noble residence in the fifteenth century on Venice’s Grand Canal. The pink facade also suggests to Fisher a local landmark, Julian Schnabel’s Palazzo Chupi in Greenwich Village,” the release explained. “Such associations offer flights of fancy during a time of curtailed travel and cancelled plans.”
The dollhouse is “a work in progress, one Fisher plans to return to,” the release noted.
“For now, this dollhouse’s secret rooms, where one could imagine curling up or entertaining at a moment’s notice, have been fixed in time and opened up so that visitors can inhabit and enjoy,” the release said.
The dollhouse is on view at the museum through Sept. 26.