Every third Thursday, IAM stays open until 8 pm with after-hours programming designed to help you end your day inspired. 

Learn about how a nearly forgotten craft likely influenced the art of Henry Darger. Inside paper dollhouse scrapbooks, children cut and pasted clippings from magazines, newspapers, and catalogs transformed blank pages into vibrant scenes. In the decades surrounding the turn of the 20th century educators taught the craft as an inexpensive method to instill American domestic taste. Similar techniques are evident in how Darger repurposed mass print scraps into imaginative worlds, suggesting that he learned about these scrapbooks in his youth. 

However, Darger’s works engage paper dolls towards a wild, messy alternative model for understanding the role of craft in the home. This presentation argues that his domestic scenes celebrate the power of the imagination to create unexpected openings—picture frames, doors, and windows—offering delightfully disobedient escapes from middle-class norms and ideals. 

About Mary Trent 

Mary Trent is an associate professor of Art and Architectural History at the College of Charleston where she specializes in American art history. She is the author of several articles on Henry Darger, African American photography and the co-editor of Diverse Voices in Photographic Albums: ​“These Are Our Stories”.