(gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) - [Narrator] Doane Powell believed every face held beauty, character or significance.

(gentle music) He was fascinated by the details and differences expressed in a human face, and he put those qualities in a mask form.

(gentle music) - [Jordan] These masks were made by Doane Powell, primarily in the 1930s through the 1950s.

(gentle music) They were really unique in the sense that they were made to be used in advertisements, in circuses, on television, in movies, theatrical productions.

- Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.

Welcome once again to masquerade party, Bobby Sherwood.

There he is.

(audience clapping) - [Narrator] Powell also created masks of recognizable figures.

A veritable who's who of the biggest names in politics and pop culture during these years.

(gentle music) Many of them were household names at the time and now are largely forgotten.

A nod to the fleeting nature of fame.

(gentle music) With an art degree from the University of Nebraska Lincoln, the Omaha born artist spent years as a political cartoonist.

He later moved to Paris to further his studies in art before ultimately settling in New York City with his family.

That's when Powell's mask making took off.

- A lot of people think that they're just paper-mache, but he used this like laminated paper technique and just kind of really experimented.

(paper rustling) - [Narrator] Curator Jordan Miller, who works with 3D objects, was a bit taken aback the first time she saw the masks.

(cardboard rubbing) - [Jordan] The thing that jumps out to me most is the fact that they are so lifelike.

Every mask has their own box.

You open the box and it's like you're looking at somebody who was just beheaded because they're so real, and I think that's probably one of the things that's most striking about them.

(gentle music) He seemed to be an eccentric artist.

(gentle music) You go and see his masks and they are super animated And exaggerated and colorful.

This is another scrapbook we have in the Doane Powell collection.

This one is though primarily of his apprentice, Kari Hunt's career.

This is a photo of Kari and her husband Doug.

Here is Kari with her daughter Karen, who is the one who donated the Doane Powell collection.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Karen Schnitzspahn remembers meeting the eccentric artist.

After her mother, Kari Hunt reached out to Powell.

- [Karen] She wrote a letter to him and she said she was very interested in learning how to make masks, and he invited her to come to his studio and to learn.

I was only about three or four years old.

(gentle music) My mom took me into New York with her, and it was so funny and so exciting.

Doane Powell was sitting on a bench wearing a pig mask that had a little straw hat, and he was waving to me and I thought it was just, was a little bit scary, but it was the funniest thing as well.

(gentle music) And then we went to his studio, he was very kind.

(gentle music) I do remember the walls were covered with masks.

(gentle music) It was quite a place, it was memorable for sure.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Both artists made hundreds of masks.

Powell even wrote a book detailing his methods for making masks.

When Doane Powell died in 1951, he left the collection in Hunt's Care.

(gentle music) - [Karen] She often talked about him And missed him very much.

(gentle music) He really gave her so much knowledge about mask making.

(gentle music) She enjoyed her time at his studio.

(gentle music) In her later years, she did tell me that she hoped that I would keep the masks and perhaps find a home for them.

(gentle music) I started writing to so many different museums (gentle music) and I got the same answer most of the time that, oh, that's very interesting.

We love those masks, but we just don't have any place to store them ourselves.

(gentle music) I remembered that Doane Powell came from Nebraska.

(gentle music) - [Jordan] Kari's daughter, Karen actually reached out to us seeing if we were interested in acquiring this collection, and we were, and it was really great because it wasn't just the masks, it's also archival material.

(paper rustling) We have a large photo collection that's all digitized and online, and then we also have two scrapbooks.

(Jordan talking about scrapbook in background) This just really tells a fuller story of who Doane Powell was and Kari Hunt, and how the masks were made and used.

(gentle music) He had a lot of really unique techniques, (gentle music) but then it also presented a lot of issues after they had been stored in a variety of conditions for decades.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] The task of restoring these delicate creations fell to the conservators at the Ford Conservation Center in Omaha.

(gentle music) - [Jordan] It was a unique challenge to try and figure out what he had used and how they could conserve it or restore it or, you know, get it to its true likeness.

(gentle music) - [Adam] I find this one remarkable because it has a mixed emotion and there's a special degree of tension that's in this smile.

- [Jordan] We have people coming and researching how he was doing what he was doing, and how they can interpret that in their own work.

- [Adam] One of the measurements that I've taken is the pupillary distance, and on average our pupils are around three inches apart.

- [Narrator] One of those people is Adam Houghton, a theater professor who teaches a class and mask performance at Brigham Young University in Utah.

(gentle music) - [Adam] They make up a remarkable collection as the work of an artist.

For me, they have a meaning because the masks allow us to see things that we can't see in our daily life.

(gentle music) For an acting student, it reveals all of this new skillset in terms of developing the body to be able to express all the emotions that the face can express.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Using Powell's book as a guide, Houghton made his own mask.

(gentle music) (gentle music) - [Michele] Wow, well, can I ask you a question?

(gentle music) - I can't speak with it on.

(laughs) (gentle music) - [Narrator] We may never know why Doane Powell and Kari Hunt dedicated so much of their lives to the art of mask making, a cultural tradition dating back thousands of years.

(gentle music) - [Adam] It is a tool of transformation and it links back to ancient practices and rituals, but it can also occur just in our celebratory moments when we put on masks like Halloween or dress up parties and so on, where we then can open the door to another way of being.

(gentle music) - [Jordan] Doane Powell was born and raised and worked and played in Nebraska for a long time, and then he went and he went to Paris and New York.

And so these masks just tell a national story as opposed to just a Nebraska story, which makes him just even more special.

(gentle music) - [Karen] My dad was a part-time magician, and my parents did magic shows, (gentle music) and they often used the masks along with the magic.

(gentle music) The newspapers in New Jersey used to go wild over the masks and sometimes we would have reporters come and do photo shoots with the masks, and this was one of my favorite things, and I do remember this.

(gentle music) My parents and I would be wearing the masks at some sort of a public place, and people would walk by and See these faces of these masks.

(gentle music) Some of them were the funny ones, some were the world leaders, and they would just be so startled and taken back, and then when they found out they're masks, they loved it, it with great fun.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] For Karen, who grew up surrounded by these strange and wonderful faces, (gentle music) the masks carry a more personal meaning.

(gentle music) - [Karen] My bedroom was on the third floor of our house.

The third floor had two bedrooms, one of 'em was mine and the other became the mask room.

It was right next to my bedroom, so it was a little scary at night.

(gentle music) I thought I would hear the masks talking to each other.

I would have some nightmares about them, but there were also some masks that I felt were my playmates, my friends.

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