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A lock of hair can be a lasting remembrance of a person who died. In Independence, Missouri, hair became more than that. For nearly 40 years, Leila's Hair Museum featured wreaths, jewelry and other artifacts made with human hair. The museum closed earlier this year. Now the family is finding new homes for the hairy artistry. Reporter Julie Denesha of member station KCUR reports.
JULIE DENESHA, BYLINE: From a small storefront on a busy street in Independence, Missouri, Lindsay Evans is on a mission.
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LINDSAY EVANS: Hey.
SARAH BADER-KING: Hey.
EVANS: How are you?
BADER-KING: Good. How are you?
EVANS: Good. Come on in. I have...
DENESHA: Since February, she's been in contact with museums across the country to find new homes for her grandmother's most treasured artifacts.
EVANS: My grandmother always said there were one of two reactions when people came in the museum. And the first one was, oh, my gosh, this is hair? Wow. The other was, this is hair? Oh, my gosh. And they would kind of run the other way (laughter).
DENESHA: The 3,000-piece collection includes Victorian-era jewelry and around a thousand delicately crafted wreaths, all made from human hair.
EVANS: Some people have a little bit of an ick factor with it. It is an odd collection.
DENESHA: Evans says her grandmother, Leila Cohoon, who founded the museum in 1986, died last fall, and the museum closed in September. So for almost four decades, Leila's Hair Museum was what Cohoon called the world's largest collection of hair work.
EVANS: They're absolutely gorgeous. From far away, you look at them and you just think, wow, that's a beautiful piece of art. And then you get close and realize that's hair. It's absolutely incredible.
DENESHA: Elaborate Victorian-era wreaths encased in shadow-box frames once covered the walls. Creating them took months or even years to complete. Each tells a story - like the one of sisters in Sedalia, Missouri, who created a wreath when they entered a convent. A teacher in Maine crafted another from her students' hair. One wall was devoted to hair from icons like Elvis Presley, John F. Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe and Michael Jackson.
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EVANS: Packed safely away, ready to go.
BADER-KING: Yes.
EVANS: I love it. OK.
DENESHA: Sarah Bader-King stopped by to choose a few wreaths with local connections. She's curator at two of Kansas City's most historic structures - the John Wornall and the Alexander Majors house museums.
BADER-KING: It just seemed like the perfect opportunity to, you know, help her keep things in Kansas City while also adding to our collection in a really substantial way.
I have my work case here (ph).
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DENESHA: As word got out that the museum was closing, a flurry of visitors have come for tours. Karen Bachmann is a professor of the history of jewelry at New York's Pratt Institute.
KAREN BACHMANN: These things got shoved in attics and forgotten about. People would look and go, I don't even know whose hair that is. But when you appreciate it and you see it in a collection such as this, they're still remembered. They're still valued.
EVANS: Listening to you talk, I feel like my grandmother's here again (crying) because the things that you're saying...
BACHMANN: Yeah.
EVANS: ...Are the things that she would tell people about...
BACHMANN: Yeah.
EVANS: ...These pieces. And so I just - I love having people here who know and appreciate this art form as much as she did.
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DENESHA: As Evans begins to wrap up the monthslong process, she says she's grateful to share her grandmother's passion.
EVANS: That's what she wanted for me, and it's helping me grieve in a way I didn't even realize I needed. And so I've loved that.
DENESHA: Evans said her grandmother wrote in a letter that she wanted her to share Leila's Hair Museum. Now she's hoping others around the country can learn more and appreciate the unusual artifacts that will now be located elsewhere.
For NPR News, I'm Julie Denesha in Kansas City.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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