美国国家公共电台 NPR An Artist's Alternative Universe And His Warehouse Full Of Dolls

LAKSHMI SINGH, HOST:

We're going to hear now about Trenton Doyle Hancock. He's a star in the art world, and he collects dolls. He has so many dolls and toys he needs a studio the size of an airplane hangar in which to store them. Hancock's work is in the permanent collections of leading museums, including the Metropolitan 1 Museum of Art.

NPR's Neda Ulaby visited his new show in Philadelphia.

NEDA ULABY, BYLINE 2: As a child, Trenton Doyle Hancock made up a superhero - Torpedo 3 Boy. The character is now the center of a complicated cosmos 4 Hancock's developed over 30 years. It preoccupies 5 his drawings, paintings, sculptures and now a stuffed torpedo boy doll.

TRENTON DOYLE HANCOCK: Well, he looks like me. He's a black guy. His face is basically my face.

ULABY: Torpedo Boy's a recurring 6 character throughout Hancock's work and in this exhibition at Temple University's Contemporary Art Museum. The show is intended to reveal the connections between Hancock's massive toy collection and his celebrated 7 art.

ROBERT BLACKSON: He's on the A-list.

ULABY: Robert Blackson runs Temple Contemporary. He says as soon as Hancock makes work, it's snapped up by fanatical collectors. But he does not cater 8 to them. Hancock makes art entirely 9 for himself.

BLACKSON: He has no choice. It's not something that he can walk away from.

ULABY: He's driven, Blackson says, by an intensely personal vision.

BLACKSON: He carries with him wherever he goes. He wears it almost wherever he goes. There's a truth there that you can't escape.

HANCOCK: I'm obsessed 10 with my own childhood.

ULABY: For example, when you walk into this show, you're overwhelmed by bright reds, greens and yellows meant to evoke 11 both a toy store and the tile in Hancock's grandma's bathroom. His stepfather was a minister and his mother a devout 12 Christian 13.

HANCOCK: She had an extreme flare-up of religion (laughter)...

ULABY: And would not let Hancock play with toys she found unwholesome. Partly in response, Hancock created his own fantastical alternative world he calls the moundverse (ph).

HANCOCK: Mounds 15 are these half-human and half-plant creatures. They're kind of these dopey, big mound 14 heaps that can't really move or do anything.

ULABY: The moundverse contains dozens of complex characters, including a goddess who controls color.

HANCOCK: And this color can be manipulated to fuel and different things.

(LAUGHTER)

HANCOCK: I know. It's (laughter) - I live in my own head.

ULABY: Many of the characters in Hancock's head appear in the show as dolls - shiny, plastic ones that are a little bit unnerving. As an African-American kid who did not own lots of black toys, Hancock's fascinated by what makes dolls objects of desire. He used to pore over the Sears catalog, analyzing 16 toy packaging and production as a way of understanding social aesthetics 17.

HANCOCK: Like, what was cute in the '60s isn't what was cute in the '70s and definitely isn't what was cute in the '90s.

ULABY: Hancock collects dolls he finds in thrift 18 stores, often missing clothes and hair. He says that helps reflect on the values placed on skin and bodies. He only buys toys made from 1959 through 1990.

HANCOCK: The rule is, if I come across it at a thrift shop, I have to buy it from those years. (Laughter) That's why I have to have another warehouse 19 to accommodate the collection at this point.

ULABY: Hancock took a group of young aspiring 20 curators to the original warehouse last year.

IDA VILLANUEVA: I've never seen so many things - like, toys and colors - all at once. It's - like, that's really the most mind-blowing thing for me.

ULABY: Twenty-one-year-old Ida Villanueva is part of the Young Curators Council at Temple Contemporary. It's a project that trains young people of color from North Philadelphia to be curators. She's using Hancock's character Torpedo Boy as an inspiration for a workshop at a nearby Puerto Rican arts center.

VILLANUEVA: Families are invited - so parents and kids - to make their own superheroes based off of their cultural backgrounds.

ULABY: It's community engagement end, says Temple Contemporary's Rob Blackson, a response to a Mellon Foundation study that showed fewer than 10 percent of museum curators and leaders are black or Hispanic.

BLACKSON: That is way off the charts in terms of our own national census 21 statistics.

ULABY: And in terms of the neighborhood where Temple Contemporary is located. Blackson also introduced Hancock, who attended Temple's Tyler School of Art, to a woman who runs a museum that's only a few blocks away. The Philadelphia Doll Museum only exhibits black dolls.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: For black children to see an image of theirself (ph) is a very positive experience.

ULABY: A short documentary about the museum is part of Hancock's new show. He collaborated 22 with Barbara Whiteman on an exhibit inspired by the Clark doll test, where psychologists asked children in the 1940s to choose between a black and white doll. Most picked the white one. The results helped influence the Supreme 23 Court case Brown v. Board of Education. The black and white dolls packing this room, says Hancock, reflect how toys have historically expressed a more limited range of possibilities for black kids.

BLACKSON: So it's like you're given a few options. It's, like, well, I can be this, this or this. But little white girls can be (laughter) that whole row of them with, like, 50 options.

ULABY: As whimsical as his work with toys might seem, artist Trenton Doyle Hancock says it's rooted in reality.

HANCOCK: And it's a very American reality.

ULABY: One he feels that needs a new mythology 24 that reflects American histories and mistakes - the sort of mythology a person might start to invent as a child, maybe while playing with dolls.

Neda Ulaby, NPR News.