2025 Conference Abstract/Peace through Outreach: The Japanese Friendship Doll Exchange as an Exhibition Initiative
Volume 21 | 2025 | General IssueIn 1927, the United States and Japan participated in a remarkable initiative called the Friendship Doll exchange. Developed in response to the anti-Asian, nativist Johnson-Reed Act of 1924, the project endeavored to improve relations between the two countries through gifts of dolls. The United States gifted thousands of blue-eyed dolls, while Japan reciprocated with fifty-eight exquisitely crafted ichimatsu dolls representing major cities and prefectures. After their arrival in San Francisco, the Japanese Friendship Dolls embarked on a national touring exhibition before they were dispersed to museums, libraries, and other institutions across the country. Despite its unusual content, as an interwar traveling exhibition the Friendship Doll exchange was not unique. On the contrary, it was one of several outreach initiatives developed in the United States during the interwar period that connected American viewers to diverse cultures through the circulation of objects. From traditional crafts to contemporary art, these exhibitions complicated nativist policies in the years preceding World War II by centering works from various places and cultures.
This paper will contextualize the Japanese Friendship Doll initiative within the broader framework of traveling exhibitions organized in the United States between the world wars. Through government initiatives, private businesses, and nonprofits, viewers around the country could encounter the art and material culture of different regions and countries via traveling exhibitions. Yet these shows were not without challenges that risked hindering their educational effectiveness, from the logistical difficulties of transporting work to the misinterpretation of objects due to the limited knowledge among exhibition organizers. By considering the Friendship Doll exchange within the larger context of interwar outreach exhibition activity, I examine the persistence of outreach exhibitions as a means of fostering understanding between different peoples and cultures. Through this consideration, I will ask whether such efforts can effectively cultivate peace.
Readers interested in learning more about this topic can visit the Natural History Museums of LA County website "Silent Envoys: The Japanese Friendship Doll Exchange." The site includes photos, an essay, and a video discussion on these dolls. For a deeper dive, see Alan Scott Pate's comprehensive book, Art As Ambassador: The Japanese Friendship Dolls of 1927. Scott is the leading expert on Japanese dolls outside of Japan, and is working with Barry Art Museum on an exhibition of these dolls for 2027.
Sara Woodbury is Curator of Art at the Barry Art Museum at Old Dominion University, where her exhibitions have addressed such topics as automatons, maritime painting, and Barbie dolls. She has degrees in art history from Lake Forest College and Williams College, and she completed her Ph.D. in American Studies at the College of William & Mary in 2024. Her scholarly research focuses on art access, with her dissertation concentrating on outreach exhibitions. Her research has appeared in The Space Between: Literature and Culture, 1914-1945, Arts, and in the collection Histories of Exhibition Design in the Museum, edited by Hajra Williams, Kate Guy, and Claire Wintle.
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- Volume 21 | 2025 | General Issue Sarah E. Cornish