The Illinois State Museum and the Museum Extensions Program
In addition to receiving works of art from the WPA allocation program, the Illinois State Museum participated in some WPA programs called Museum Extensions. A Children's Museum section of the museum opened in 1940 in a remodeled house at the corner of Second Street and South Grand Avenue in Springfield. It offered miniature dioramas on history and other topics, and a Museum Club for Children.The
WPA also paid workers to construct for the museum some historical dioramas
and dolls dressed in historical costumes of the 1820s through 1910. These
were lent to schools, traveling by train and in the Museum mobile.
Springfield
resident Monte Lee Zimmerman worked on these projects creating the figures,
dolls, and objects they held or wore, such as miniature weapons, pots
and pans, and hats. She worked for this WPA project from 1938 to 1941.
Her salary was $20 per week. Monte learned to model in clay, make plaster
molds, and cast in wax while she worked with the Illinois State Museum's
dioramist, Bernard Wright. Monte made the 10-inch tall dolls that were
displayed in the Museum Mobile that visited schools throughout Illinois.
Monte later used the skills she learned at the Museum to make historical and international dolls. In 1996 she made a gift to the Museum of a set of about forty pairs of international dolls —one boy, one girl— each dressed in a costume of the culture it represented.