INDEPENDENCE, Mo. (AP) – The walls of the Leila Hair Museum are filled with wreaths made from centuries-old human hair, and glass cases are filled with necklaces and watch bands woven from the hair of the dead. Hair has been attributed to past presidents, Hollywood legend Marilyn Monroe, and even Jesus.
For nearly 30 years, this hair art collection in the Kansas City suburb of Independence has attracted a wide range of interests, including heavy metal legend Ozzy Osbourne.
However, Leila Cohoun, the museum’s namesake, passed away last November at the age of 92. Now, her granddaughter, Lindsay Evans, is busy moving her collection of more than 3,000 items to museums across the United States, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.
“Every time I come here, I feel her presence,” Evans said Monday during a tour with representatives from the National Museum of Funeral History in Houston, who left with about 30 pieces. “This is her place. So I feel like this process of bringing her collection back home is helping me grieve for her in a way I didn’t even realize I really needed.”
It all started in 1956 when Cohoon, a hairdresser, was shopping for Easter shoes. Inside an antique store, she found a gold frame filled with strands of hair twisted into the shape of a flower.
“She told me to forget my Easter shoes,” Evans said. “My grandfather always said this was the most expensive piece in the museum, because look where it all started.”
Evans keeps it for himself.
This form of art reached its peak in popularity in the mid-1800s, when women wrapped the hair of the dead to make jewelry or intertwined the hair of loved ones to make wreaths to tell family stories.
But by the 1940s, hair art had fallen out of favor and memories were captured in photographs, Evans said. She added: “This work was not celebrated because it was primarily created by women. That’s why there aren’t many works like this in large museums.”
Her grandmother saved people from being thrown in the trash, wrote books, taught classes on the art form, and trained a new generation of artists.
Hair art was often housed in elaborate frames with original glass, so when my grandmother began haggling over frames with antique dealers, they often offered to remove the hair.
“And she goes, ‘No, no, leave it there,'” Evans said.
Then the grandmother gave them business cards and told them to be careful. Soon I was getting calls from dealers all over the country.
“If it had hair, she got it,” Evans said. Mr. Evans sometimes accompanied his grandmother as she searched for new additions.
The collection expanded to include a wreath containing the hair of every woman in the Vermont League of Women Voters in 1865. A pair of crescent-shaped wreaths contain the hair of two sisters whose heads were shaved upon entering the convent. Several pieces feature taxidermy.
Picture frames filled the walls of her home and the beauty school she ran with her husband. She shoved them under the bed and in the closet. The couple eventually commandeered the building, a former car dealership located between a fast food restaurant and a car wash.
Celebrities also jumped on board. Actress and comedian Phyllis Diller donated a hair wreath that had been passed down in her family for generations. Television personality Mike Rowe filmed an episode of “Somebody’s Gotta Do It” here. There may even be some fragments of Osborn in there. When Evans comes to visit, Cohoon cuts out the key, but Evans still hasn’t found it.
Evans is being tight-lipped about how much her grandmother has spent over the years, but said she expects the art may be worth more than $1 million.
As Genevieve Keeney, director of the National Museum of Funeral History in Houston, walked through the collection, she gazed intently at jewelry commemorating the dead, including a small pin with the lock of a 7-year-old girl who died in 1811.
“I’ve always felt it was important to educate people about death,” said Keeney, who is also a licensed mortician. “Our society is so unfair in helping people understand what it really feels like when death occurs.”
Evans herself is grappling with a range of emotions as she slowly brings her grandmother’s legacy back home.
“I want people to see all of this, because that’s what she wanted,” Evans said. “But it’s going to be a little heartbreaking to see this empty.”
