Kimberly Camp

Kimberly Camp was born on September 11, 1956 in Camden, New Jersey. Kimberly is the only child of Hubert Camp, an oral surgeon and jazz trumpeter, and Marie Dimery Camp, a hatmaker and seamstress who also worked as a bookkeeper for an insurance company. Most of Camp's family were artists, and she was raised in an artistic environment. Later, she recalled visiting numerous museums during her childhood and getting her first set of painting supplies from Zabar's, an arts and crafts store across the street from her house. She developed a talent for art, and held her first art exhibition at the age of 12.[2] After selling all of her paintings at the exhibition, Kimberly's art teacher decided she had nothing more to teach her, so Marie Camp found a new art tutor for her daughter.[3]

After graduating Mullica Hill Friends School at the age of sixteen,[4] she pursued a double major in studio arts and art history at the University of Pittsburgh, with a focus on the art of China and Japan. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1978.[5] In 1980, she received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship to support an artist's residency in Ghana with Lonnie Graham to create art installations on the slave trade connection between Ghana and the United States.[6]

She began making and selling dolls in 1982, first for friends and family. The first set of fifty-five dolls were made out of suede fabric, and were dressed in thirty-two types of traditional cloth from African nations.[2] She sold the dolls at the International House in Philadelphia's Kwanzaa Bazaar that year, and they sold out within two hours.[7] At the time, she called the doll's her "Brown Babies," her father later suggested the name Kimkins.[3]

Painter Faith Ringgold was also exhibiting work at the Bazaar, and became fascinated by Camp's dolls. Ringgold bought five of the dolls and connected Camp with an editor at Essence magazine who picked up the story.[8] After being featured in Essence, Camp began selling the dolls internationally and put together a catalogue for them.[3] By the mid-1980s, she was selling approximately 2,500 Kimkins a year.[9] Camp and the Kimkins dolls were featured in publications such as National Geographic World,[10] Nouvel Objet, The New York Times, FiberArts, The Village Voice and Smithsonian.[7]

Camp's "Twilight" doll garnered artistic and critical attention when it was the centerpiece and catalogue cover illustration for the 1995 traveling exhibition "Uncommon Beauty and Common Objects," organized by the National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center in Wilberforce, Ohio. The doll features a face made from paper clay with a body that is a mixture of raffia, leather, suede, burlap, recycled Persian lamb, and Ghanaian brass beads.[11]

In 1984, she returned to her hometown of Camden where she started working as a technical illustrator making isometric engineering drawings,[3] and became involved in the local art community. She founded an anti-graffiti program in Camden which became a local murals project.[9][4] She was arts administrator for the city of Camden during the early 1980s.

Camp earned a Master of Science degree in arts administration from Drexel University in Philadelphia in 1986. After graduation, she was program director for Pennsylvania Council for the Arts from 1986 until 1989, when she relocated to Washington, D.C. to serve as director of the Experimental Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution.[12][13] She managed and presented eighteen exhibitions at the Smithsonian, which focused on experimentation in presentation, interpretation and design.[14] Her work at the Experimental Gallery was widely considered to be innovative and included exhibitions on topics such as racism and homelessness.[15][16]

In 1994, Camp applied for the directorship of the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, after being persuaded by a recruiter. As director, she initiated a number of changes to the way the museum operated, including computerizing its office and offering corporate membership and named gift programs.[9] She presided over the museum's move from a 28,000 sq. foot building to a newly constructed 119,000-square-foot building.[12]

By 1998, the museum had experienced a 1,000% increase in development revenue, and a 300% increase in attendance. The museum's annual budget also increased from $1.2 million to $6.7 million.[9] Camp presented several touring and interactive exhibitions.[12]

Camp stepped down as director of the museum in 1998, and became the first president and CEO of the controversial Barnes Foundation.[17][18] Known for its collection of French post-impressionist art, the Barnes Foundation museum is also home to a large collection of African art.[19] Original works by prominent African American artists such as Horace Pippin, are included in the collection, in addition to works by European artists Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, Vincent van Gogh and Pablo Picasso.[20][21]

Camp researched the Foundation's history and controversies, accessing both museum archives and oral histories.[22] Much of her research focused on the life and legacy of the museum's founder, chemist and philanthropist Albert C. Barnes, who she considered to have an unfairly negative reputation. Camp has lectured and written about the positive legacy of Barnes, including his decision to bequeath his art collection to Lincoln University as a way to make more accessible to African-Americans.[23] Over the course of three years, she wrote a 400 page manuscript titled Defending the Dead, covering the biography of Albert C. Barnes.[24]

Originally located in Lower Merion, Pennsylvania, the collection was moved to Philadelphia’s Benjamin Franklin Parkway in 2012.[20] Controversy over the move began years before it actually relocated. It stemmed from a widely held belief that Barnes stated in his will that he did not want the Foundation moved from its Lower Merion home.[25][26] Camp played a pivotal role in the move, and provided Barnes Foundation's legal team with "information in Dr. Barnes' own words about why he would want the collection in Philadelphia."[4]

Camp retired from the Barnes Foundation in 2005, and moved to the Pacific Northwest where she was CEO of the Hanford Reach Interpretive Center, also known as the Reach Museum until 2011. During her tenure at the Reach Museum, she led a science, technology and natural history project in collaboration with indigenous Native American tribes who lived in the area.[27][28]

In 2013, Camp founded Galerie Marie, named for her late mother, in Collingswood, New Jersey. The gallery displays artwork and crafted items by Camp and other artists.[5][29] She currently resides above the gallery, where she has her workshop.[30] In 2016, she donated the Kimberly Camp Papers, a collection of biographical material, writing, art, sketchbooks and recordings dating between 1970 and 2015, to the Smithsonian.[31]

Currently, Camp serves as a curator for A New View Camden public art project, and is adjunct faculty at Rutgers University and Drexel University, her alma mater. She previously lectured at Lincoln University.[27] Camp consults for non-profit organizations on strategic planning, leadership transition and best practices in governance.

Camp has described her artistic process as being intuitive, and "[growing] off her work table."[11] Camp's art is deeply connected to African and African-American culture. She was inspired to begin creating dolls to allow African-Americans, particularly children, to engage with their history and culture through play.[32] Camp draws on her own spirituality, and she utilizes imagery from many religious expressions such as Yoruba religion, Christianity and Hinduism. Curator Philip Collins described her dolls as being "possessed with a visual excitement that expresses an aura of mystery and rare beauty."[32]

In 2016 she produced the "Immigration Series" of dolls, which incorporated color patterns and designs from countries which were being banned by the Presidential administration.[33]

When I came back from Morocco, I brought camel belly leather. Can’t get that here. When I went to Japan, I brought back silk, beads, and feathers, and when I went to Ghana, I brought back textiles and more beads.
— Kimberly Camp, Black Art In America,[2]

Camp's dolls typically incorporate soft bodies with hand-painted clay faces, as well as hand-dyed fabrics.[12] She makes body parts such as faces, hands and feet, and then assembles a doll out of the finished components. The faces of the dolls are sculpted, fired, painted and sealed. Camp uses materials found from different cultures around the world to craft dolls with layered significance. Her materials include raffia, animal teeth and antler, textiles, and cowrie shells.[2]

She frequently uses Japanese paper clay, polymer clay stoneware and porcelain for her sculptures.[33] Many of her dolls are ornamented with trade beads, such as millefiori and chevron beads, which were historically used as currency for the trade of enslaved people in West Africa between the 16th and 20th centuries.[8] Her recent work includes four-legged dolls made out of stoneware. Kimkins dolls include fanciful elements, such as "Afrocentric-looking elves, trolls, and fairies."[5]

Camp's early paintings were alkyd and oil paintings, she later transitioned to use more acrylic paints in addition to her multi-media artworks.[34]

• "Spirit Guides," Filo Sofi Art
• 2007 - 2008 "Stories: Paintings and Dolls by Kimberly Camp," African American Museum in Philadelphia
• 2006 "African American Dolls by Kimberly Camp," Black Academy of Arts and Letters, Dallas, TX
• 1996 "Solo Exhibition," University of Michigan, Ann Arbor MI
• 1994 "Solo exhibition," CRT/Craftery Gallery, Hartford, CT
• 1994 "Solo exhibition," Harrison Museum of African American Culture, Roanoke, VA
• 1994 "Solo Exhibition for the Emerging Forms Series," International Sculpture Center, Washington, DC
• 1993 "Fabric Figures," Taubman Museum of Art, Roanoke, VA

• 2021 "Shrine to Beauty,"[1] Filo Sofi Arts, Cranford, NJ
• 2020 "Art Against Racism,"[37] online exhibition
• 2012 "Freedom to See Ourselves," Washington State University
• 2009 "Women Who Walk the Path," Washington State University
• 2007 "From Taboo to Icon: Africanist Turnabout," Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Icebox Gallery
• 1995 - 1996 "International Women's Art," World Bank Art Society
• 1993 - 1995 "Uncommon Beauty in Common Objects: The Legacy of African American Craft Art," National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center
• 1993 - 1995 "Traveling exhibition," American Craft Museum; African American Panoramic Experience; Museum of Afro-American Life and Culture; Afro- American Fine Art Museum; Renwick Gallery of American Crafts, National Museum of American Art
• 1993 - 1995 "Traveling exhibition," American Museums of Quilts and Textiles; National Afro-American Museum; Junior Black Academy of Arts and Letters Quiltworks '93; Frank Hale Cultural Center
• 1993 - 1994 "Touch: Beyond the Visual," National Museum of Women in the Arts; The Hand Workshop
• 1992 "Dolls! by African-American Artists," Diggs Gallery, Winston-Salem State University
• 1991 ""Yes Sir. That's My Baby. African American Dolls." Banneker-Douglass Museum,

• J.B. Speed Art Museum
• Camden Historical Society
• Reader's Digest
• Manchester Craftsmen's Guild

• Faith Ringgold
• Judith Jamison
• Delroy and Nashormeh Lindo
• Abbey Lincoln
• Juliette Bethea
• Anne Wollman
• Cynthia Reese
• Anne d'Harnoncourt
• Joseph Rishel

• Baltimore Museum of Art
• Afro-American Historical and Cultural Society Museum
• Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
• Longwood Gardens, Kennett Square
• Anacostia Community Museum and Renwick Gallery - Smithsonian Institution
• Harrison Museum of African American Culture
• African American Museum in Philadelphia
• Indiana University of Pennsylvania
• Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
• Banneker-Douglass Museum, Annapolis
• Camden Historical Society
• Baron College, Philadelphia
• Winchester Public Schools, Virginia