CITY ARTS : All Dolled Up

There is small chance that doll lover Carole Kaye will ever forget to thank the little people.

Kaye has turned a personal fascination with dolls and dollhouses into the Carole and Barry Kaye Museum of Miniatures, a 14,000-square-foot showroom featuring intricately detailed replicas of people, places and periods.

Ella Fitzgerald and a beaming Louis Armstrong play in a Hollywood Bowl the size of a television. A Japanese empress no taller than a pencil strolls past an 18th-Century teahouse and a pond full of colorful koi. And rawhide drifters amble down the dusty streets of a Lilliputian-size Old West frontier town.

Other famous shrunken faces include designer Galia Bazylko’s collection of American First Ladies, from Martha Washington through Nancy Reagan, decked out in their inaugural gowns.

The museum, which includes a gift shop that sells miniatures and a video tour of the Kaye collection, opened last month after moving from a smaller Century City location.

The Kaye Museum of Miniatures, 5900 Wilshire Blvd., is located across from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; 10 a.m. through 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday; $7.50 for adults, $6.50 for those 60 and older, $5 for students, $3 for children younger than 12; (213) 937-6464.