In 1951, the elderly Louise Gardner agreed to lend to the Museum of Science and Industry a painstakingly assembled collection of 258 antique dolls representing many different historical eras and cultures all over the world.
The collection included German, Swiss and Lithuanian folk dolls; exotic dolls from China, the Philippines, Bali and Mexico. There were dolls made by Native Americans and Eskimos, and the homemade cloth dolls of little pioneer girls whose families were homesteading frontier regions.
Gardner even supplied the display cases for the collection, and for years she would visit the museum occasionally to add dolls and rearrange the exhibit. After her death in 1961, her heir told the museum that the dolls could remain there on loan, as long as they were on display.
But a recent lawsuit filed in Cook County Circuit Court contends that not only did the museum dismantle the display many years ago, it now admits that half of the dolls are missing.
What happened to the collection–which, if intact, could be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to an appraiser–is a mystery for now. The missing dolls could have been stolen, thrown away, mistakenly sold off by the museum, or simply misplaced.
The museum isn’t talking, saying it never discusses pending litigation. But several lawyers familiar with the laws governing loan arrangements with museums say the Museum of Science and Industry probably will have to make restitution to the owner for missing or damaged dolls.
The woman who came to own the Gardner collection, Raphaela Heggen-Ades, is a 40-year-old Hyde Park native who now operates a pub and restaurant on a tropical island off Thailand with her English husband.
She filed the suit last month, saying she would like the museum to repair any damaged dolls to their original condition, and, if it cannot find the missing ones, to replace them with dolls of similar age, style and value.
Wants dolls displayed
If it does these things, and promises to keep the dolls on display, the museum can keep the collection, she said.
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“I grew up seven blocks away from the museum, so I used to visit the doll collection quite a bit as a little girl,” Heggen-Ades said recently in a telephone interview from Thailand.
“As an adult, I am not very much interested in dolls, of course, but I feel a responsibility for the collection because of its history with my family. I want to see to it that it remains intact and on display somewhere, as Louise Gardner wished.”
At the time of her death, Gardner was the last of three unmarried, patrician sisters who shared a home at 5749 S. Dorchester Ave. in Hyde Park.
Her sister Helen was a renowned School of the Art Institute art historian whose 1926 textbook, “Art Through the Ages,” still is in print and in wide use in universities. It was the first introductory textbook to expand its horizons beyond European art, treating prehistoric, Asian, African and indigenous American art as equally relevant.
On her scholarly travels around the world, Helen Gardner often bought dolls for her sister’s collection.
In her will, Louise Gardner left the dolls to Gregor Heggen, who met her in 1956 when he rented a room from her while attending the University of Chicago and who helped care for her in her final years. Heggen, now retired, was for decades a beloved German teacher at the university’s Lab School.
In 1965, Heggen wrote a letter to the museum expressing his desire to leave the collection at the museum for as long as it wished to display the dolls.
The museum, according to Heggen-Ades’ attorney, Jason Bruce, acknowledged that agreement in a letter to Heggen on April 28, 1965.
In 1981, Heggen gave the dolls to his daughter, Raphaela, on her 18th birthday. She and her husband now operate the Frog and Gecko pub and restaurant on the island of Koh Samui off southern Thailand.
Heggen-Ades said that in 2000 the museum contacted her and asked if she would be interested in deeding the collection to the museum. She asked for an inventory, she said.
Two years later the museum got back to her, saying the inventory revealed half the dolls were missing, Heggen-Ades said. Many remaining dolls, she said, were in a deteriorated state.
“Most of the European dolls, the most valuable ones, are missing. Exactly how much they are worth now, I don’t know,” she said. “What we are suing them for is lost dolls and damages. I would like to have the entire collection back.”
Heggen-Ades commissioned Martha Arney, who is a registered appraiser and owns an antiques mall in Sawyer, Mich., to try to determine the current value of the collection.
So far, Arney said she has been able to review only incomplete records of the museum display, which originally started with 258 dolls, but may have grown to more than 300.
Based on that review, replacing the missing dolls could cost the museum hundreds of thousands of dollars, Arney said. Antique dolls have soared in value in the last couple of decades.
The collection featured many rare dolls, Arney said. “There was an old Nancy Hanks doll, depicting the mother of Abraham Lincoln, and an unusual 10-headed doll,” she said.
“There was a French bisque music box doll,” also known as an automaton because when the box was opened the doll danced or moved. “Those are extremely valuable dolls today.”
Dating from the mid-1800s to the turn of the century, automatons typically are valued in the $20,000 to $30,000 range, Arney said, though they can sell for as much as $100,000 or as little as $5,000.
“Frankly, if the museum put the collection back into its original condition and wanted to keep it on display, that would be OK with me,” Heggen-Ades said. “If they don’t want it, I’d find another museum home for it. I would like to keep it in the family for my nieces. I’m interested in preserving [the dolls] as history.”
Scott Hodes, a Chicago attorney who specializes in litigation issues involving art and museums at the firm Bryan Cave, said the museum probably has a responsibility to repair and conserve any damaged dolls.
Appraisal could be issue
However, he said, the museum might be off the financial hook when it comes to the value of the missing dolls. When assigning value to lost loaned objects, the law relies on the most recent appraisal of the objects, Hodes said. And Louise Gardner’s dolls were last appraised in 1962 for her probated will, when they were valued at $3,885.
“These sorts of loans are known as `indefinite loans,’ in which the owner of the art objects allows the museum to hold the art for as long as it keeps the objects on display,” Hodes said.
“When I have clients who lend objects out on indefinite loans, I insist on periodic appraisals of the objects. A 1950 value for a Picasso painting, after all, isn’t going to be much good in 2004, when it will have a significantly higher value.”
Those questions aside, the museum had “a duty to take care of those dolls,” said David Ostrove, a Los Angeles lawyer who specializes in lawsuits against trustees who are negligent in holding other people’s property.
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“Whether or not these things happen often with museum loans, I am not qualified to say,” said Ostrove, “but every museum that undertakes to display somebody else’s property assumes fiduciary duties. Their duty is to return the property in at least as good condition as they received it.”