The 19th-century dollhouse of British origin on loan from the Nordenfjeldske collection was donated to the museum by a Trondheim citizen, whose family's children owned it for several generations. Before the late 19th century, dollhouses were aimed at adults. The miniature house represents an upper-class ideal of private space, and existed as an example of the desired aesthetic normalcy of its time. The dollhouse the museum owns has been well-weathered by time, and its abandoned condition creates an ambivalent perspective on the Bildung (as a civilizational effort) behind it. Considering exhibitions as a space to expose and enhance relationships between objects, environments, and the memories they safeguard, we as curators offer to direct attention not just to the dollhouse per se, but also to the relationships its presence and high-brow decay establishes with other works in the room.

-        Yaniya Mikhalina