Victorian Hairwork Collection from Leila’s Hair Museum Goes on View at Morbid Anatomy Library in Brooklyn

Key facts

• Around 50 Victorian hairwork keepsakes go on long-term view starting 27 September at the Morbid Anatomy Library in Brooklyn, New York.
• The collection was obtained from Leila’s Hair Museum, a recently closed institution in western Missouri founded by Leila Cohoon, who died in 2024.
• Leila Cohoon, a hairdresser and hairdressing instructor, began collecting in the 1950s and amassed around 3,000 hairwork antiques.
• Hairwork historian Karen Bachmann calls Cohoon’s museum “the Louvre of hairwork,” noting outstanding variety and volume.
• Cohoon’s granddaughter Lindsay Evans has dispersed the collection via donations to dozens of organizations, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, American Folk Art Museum and Smithsonian National Museum of American History.
• Karen Bachmann and Joanna Ebenstein, Morbid Anatomy’s founder and creative director, traveled to Missouri to select acquisitions with Evans.
• Dave Herman, founder of Brooklyn’s City Reliquary museum, and his wife Shannon Herman transported the gifts from Missouri to New York in custom foam enclosures.
• Lindsay Evans says the Morbid Anatomy installation “looks just like my grandmother’s museum—she’d love it,” and that Cohoon wanted the pieces to be seen, appreciated and loved.