Tucson miniature museum’s new director explores just how far she can take tiny art

The Mini Time Machine Museum of Miniatures is a fixture in the Tucson arts scene, and it does a lot more than showcase tiny versions of things.

The miniature museum is a true art museum. One of its latest exhibitions showcases signage of the Old Pueblo by artist Jorge Ruiz; another highlights the cultural history of Japan through tiny carved sculptures.

And it uses miniatures to help us all think about scale — from exploring the art of model railroads to the scale models used by filmmaker Ray Harryhausen to create to create “Clash of the Titans” and “Jason and the Argonauts.” 

And its new director is interested in exploring just how far she can take the art of miniatures. Meg Hagyard took over the role after spending a career in Tucson arts institutions, including Tucson Children’s Museum, the Tucson Museum of Contemporary Art and the University of Arizona’s Art Museum.

She visited KJZZ’s studios recently and said she’s always been an arts person — from when she was a kid, to getting a degree in studio arts in college, to working in arts nonprofits, to museum work. But the Museum of Miniatures is nothing like she’s ever tackled before.

Full conversation

MEG HAGYARD: The museum was founded by Pat and Walter Arnell. And Pat Arnell began collecting miniatures, dollhouses. And they moved to Tucson in the 1970s. And from that point, Pat was traveling around the world collecting miniatures.

And she was a miniaturist herself. So she would build dollhouses, she would collect other people’s work and really built this incredible collection of over 300 dollhouses and other kinds of miniatures.

But for us, when we say the Mini Time Machine Museum of Miniatures, we’re talking about things that are playing with scale. So it’s things that are smaller than they would be in real life, often done in a hyperrealistic way but not necessarily always.

So that’s the fun of this kind of this kind of medium, is that you can really bring in fantasy elements. You create your own realities. It’s a way of storytelling.

LAUREN GILGER: Did you say a miniaturist?

HAGYARD: Yes.

GILGER: That’s the phrase. That’s so cool. So like artists who work in miniature, basically?

HAGYARD: Absolutely, yes. And this is a long established craft. In Tucson, there’s the Tucson Miniature Society, which is a 50-year-old organization. A lot of people, when they think of miniatures and they think of museums, they will think of the Thorne Rooms. For example, the Phoenix Art Museum has 20 Thorne Room boxes.

So we have some of that: very formal, classical spaces. But then we also have a whole room that’s dedicated to fantasy realm. So it’s Christmas all the time in parts of the museum, which is really wonderful and charming. We have artists who are really dedicated to accuracy in historical depiction of what they’re working on.

And then others that they are just pulling from all types of different things and creating their own worlds.

GILGER: Yeah, imaginary worlds in this beautiful way. The motto is “preserving and advancing the art of miniatures for all.” So this is not crafts, this is art in a real way. And you bring in shows and do kind of work with artists that have the same kind of commentary that any artist would at many other institutions.

HAGYARD: Yeah. And then one of the things that we do is also showing people how miniatures are used in different fields that they might not have thought of. So, for example, right now we have an exhibition by Ray Harryhausen, who is sort of the the grandfather of stop-motion animation, known for films like “Jason and the Argonauts” and “Clash of the Titans.”

So he worked in scale in different ways. Not everything that he did was maybe specifically miniature. But his relationship to working with scale absolutely fits in what we do. And so when you come in the museum right now, you get to see all of these incredible creatures that he made for films.

And then of course, miniatures have been historically used in architecture. Prior to all the incredible technology that we have available now, people were making scale models. And so there’s lots of different industries. The automotive industry works in scale models.

So it’s a fun way for people to both connect and understand just how to think about scale, how it’s applied in the world. Not just by artists but in many different ways.

Amber Victoria Singer

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KJZZ

GILGER: OK, so you talked about sort of what’s in the museum and what these miniatures are, the mission of the founders of this museum. How do you want to take this into the future?

HAGYARD: We are very committed to working with contemporary miniaturists. So I think that’s one of the things that we are very excited about is following where miniaturism is today and how it evolves. So it’s not going to look the same as it did in the 1980s as it’s going to look in 2030.

So the museum is able to really follow the trajectory of the field.

GILGER: What do you think is going to change in this field in the future?

HAGYARD: Well, Instagram and social media has been tremendous for, I think, the awareness and interest in miniatures.

GILGER: People taking pictures of little scenes they create.

HAGYARD: Yeah! And I mean, there’s a whole thread on miniature food. And whether it’s models of food or people actually making miniature food that’s consumable. I think nail art is really fascinating. There is a lot of playing with scale and even three-dimensional representations in nail art.

So I think that’s what’s exciting is that we can’t predict where miniatures and the idea of playing with scale is going to show up for people. But there is a heightened awareness and interest in it right now, which is very exciting for us.

GILGER: Yeah, it’s really cool. It’s an interesting moment for it.

HAGYARD: Yeah.

GILGER: Let me talk to you about your philosophy on museums since you’ve worked in so many different types of museums throughout your career and now you’re taking the helm here.

This is an interesting moment, I think, in museums, because we’ve seen them really change in terms of how the space is used. Like they’re not as quiet or, you know, serious maybe as they once were.

There’s lots of interactivity that’s very cool in museums right now. How do you think about this in terms of the Museum of Miniatures?

HAGYARD: Yeah, so one of the things that’s wonderful about the Museum of Miniatures is that it is an unexpected experience for people typically. And like you mentioned, people — and libraries — have certainly changed a lot, too. But libraries, museums, you were to go and be quiet and behave a certain way and not necessarily the place that you wanted to take your children because you needed to manage them.

So the Museum of Miniatures is kind of an in-between space where you get to explore, there’s curiosity. But at the same time, we’re also committed to the educational side of the mission of the museum. So you can come in and have one kind of experience one time and focus on being charmed by the contents of what you’re seeing and amazed by thinking about how did somebody craft these tiny little silver spoons or these crystal goblets?

And then the next time you come in, you could really investigate an artist’s perspective and the commentary they may be making through their work. So there’s lots of different ways to come at the material, which I think is wonderful.

GILGER: Yeah. So last question for you then, because you mentioned it: How do artists create a tiny goblet or a tiny silver spoon?

HAGYARD: Well, I mean, in very different ways, depending on the artist. So some artists — like a dollhouse, specifically. You take a dollhouse, you look at it, and you may see wallpaper, you may see a wooden floor, you may see a velvet couch. And in some cases, that wooden floor, the artist has hewn individual pieces of wood and laid the planks. And it’s literally a reproduction of process of putting in a wood floor like you would in any kind of space.

And then 3D printing is also making a change in miniaturists. Some people are very committed that every single aspect of it is handmade by them. Other people are utilizing technology like scanning objects.

We have a collection that’s going to be coming on view of furniture that’s actually in the Getty Museum, their collection. And this artist has remade the objects in miniature. Some of them handmade, some of them using 3D technology. So, yeah, any kind of tool that you can think of that artists are using, miniaturists are using as well.

We have Baccarat crystal that is Baccarat crystal but in miniature. So how the artist was able to carve the crystal, I can’t tell you how it’s done.

GILGER: Maybe it’s better if we don’t know.

HAGYARD: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

GILGER: The mystery remains.