This past May, visitors at the National Museum of American Indian’s imagi-NATIONS Activity Center had the opportunity to experience part of the museum’s collection in a unique way. Sally Gunhee Kim showed a room full of children and adults how to use their senses to notice everything they could about a set of elaborately beaded and decorated cloth dolls in the collection. She had created samples made from the same kinds of materials so they could experience what their tanned animal hide felt like, inhale their smokey smell and even listen to their cowry shells jingling. This multisensory approach to exploring these dolls was all the more unusual given Kim could not hear those sounds herself.
Inspired by the dolls of Juanita and Joyce Growing Thunder Fogarty (in front), Sally Kim beaded pieces of smoked hide to share at her program.
Photo by NMAI Staff
During her NMAI program in May, Kim showed her smoked hide samples to museum visitors, who could not only see but touch, smell and hear them as their beads and cowry shells jingled.
Photo by NMAI Staff
Born deaf to South Korean immigrants, Kim grew up in Vancouver, British Columbia, where her mother would take her to art galleries and museums almost every other week. She enjoyed immersing herself in the art and cultural belongings on display.
Kim hasn’t let being deaf slow her down. She would go on to earn a Bachelor of Arts in Physical Chemistry and Visual Arts from Brown University in Rhode Island, and a Master of Art Conservation from Queen’s University in Ontario. She has already published research papers about heritage conservation as well as accessibility and disability identities in a museum setting.
Her fascination for dolls also began when she was a child. She taught herself to sew, and later as a young adult, how to create her own dolls out of used cloth. But, she said, “I never outgrew the habit of making and collecting dolls.”
Yet Kim didn’t anticipate her love of dolls would lead her to a research project at NMAI. For the past two years, she served as an NMAI Andrew Mellon fellow. She evaluated records from the more than 2,740 dolls in the collection at NMAI's Conservation Research Center to choose which of them she would study. In the end, she chose to focus on five “soft-sculpture” dolls made by three generations of Dakota/Nakota artists: Joyce Growing Thunder Fogarty, her daughter Juanita Growing Thunder Fogarty and her granddaughter Jessa Rae Growing Thunder. They create not only full-size Dakota/Nakota regalia but also cloth and animal-brain-tanned hide dolls wearing traditional historical Dakota/Nakota clothing adorned with colorful glass microbeads, porcupine quills and accessories.
Kim worked closely with Juanita virtually and when she visited the NMAI's Cultural Resources Center in Suitland, Maryland, for three days during 2023. She interviewed her about her memories about her family as well as their approach to making dolls. Juanita recalled how she learned to sew by watching her mother. “I saw mother sewing everyday," she said. "I practiced until now I can practically sew with my eyes closed.”
Juanita has in turn not only taught her daughter but also her nieces, nephews and others in her community how to sew. She said she was glad Kim included children in her program as "making it for the youth was important to me. It is how our culture is carried on.”
Juanita said working with Kim was a joy, not only because of her sincere interest in her family's artworks but also because she understood how making dolls was “a sensory thing." Juanita teaches "how it all feels—the beads when they are sewn down, the evenness of a flat stich, the 'hump' of a lazy stitch."
Kim said she was attracted to the dolls the women made because as a dollmaker herself, she felt as she examined them she could “understand what the Growing Thunder women were sensing and feeling” as they made them. Each doll tells its own story, whether it depicts a young girl coming of age or a warrior chief.
At the program, Kim talked about the dolls in the museum's collection while NMAI's Head of Conservation Kelly McHugh and other staff showed two of the Growing Thunder dolls to the audience. Kim then encouraged the attendees to make paper dolls that represented their family and friends, which in turn created their own memories. “I wanted them to have something tangible that they could take with them,” Kim said.
While they were working on their projects, Kim and NMAI staff took the beaded hide samples she had created to each table, letting participants touch, smell and listen to them. One girl commented that she thought the dangling cowry shells sounded like ocean waves, and a boy said the hide smelled like smoke from his father’s barbeque grill.
Shannon Wagner, the imagiNATIONS Activity Center's lead educator, assisted with the program. She said Kim's warmth and enthusiam emanated throughout her presentation, and that she "really connected with the kids."
“Sally is very inclusive," Juanita said. "She had a better understanding of how to approach this because of her own disability. It gave her a slightly different viewpoint. I was open to it, and appreciated it.”
Kim reads lips to understand those with whom she is conversing. So to work with Juanita and others, NMAI staff ensured that those people talking to her who wanted to wear a mask for protection from respiratory diseases were provided one with a clear plastic window so Kim could see their lips. In addition, she used the live transcription function on virtual conference calls and sat in the front row at in-person staff meetings to see presenters clearly.
While such accommodations enabled Kim to conduct her research at NMAI and she feels accessibility at museums "is getting better," many have a long way to go. For example, she said, the museums she visited as a child still show videos without captions. And to protect items on display, most museums use glass to separate visitors from them so that the only sense people can use to interact with them is sight.
Kim now serves as a conservator at the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria, British Columbia. She continues to create dolls as well as promote access and equity in museums.
“Sally was such a good teacher,” said McHugh, who oversaw Kim’s study at the NMAI. "She has increased our general awareness of the environment around us, made us more cognizant of the needs of those who cannot hear." All of this, McHugh said, she did "with incredible humor and grace.”