Saddam’s puppet regime

Saddam Hussein may not be running Iraq, but he’s unmistakably making an impression on the 5800 block of Wilshire Boulevard.

That’s the address of the Craft and Folk Art Museum, where Peter Tokovsky took over as executive director in January, and where an exhibition of puppets from around the globe will be up through May 25.

Tokovsky, who came from an adjunct associate professor position in UCLA’s world arts and cultures program, knew there would be challenges in this job. Despite its site across Wilshire Boulevard from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Craft and Folk Art Museum, now under the wing of the city Cultural Affairs Department, had fallen on lean times in recent years, with slim visitation figures and little money available to stage exhibitions.

Tokovsky’s response was “Puppets,” a show that includes more than 120 puppets (from finger puppets to marionettes), all drawn from collections of local donors and institutions.

The show is designed to highlight the diversity of the discipline, from a 200-year-old Sicilian centaur to Crow T. Robert and Tom Servo, the wise-cracking silhouettes seen in TV’s “Mystery Science Theater 3000.” But that diversity raised a tricky question for a freshman museum director.

Among the candidates for inclusion were a pair of George W. Bush and Saddam Hussein puppets and video made early this year by Greg Williams and Steve Sherman of the Puppet Studio in Los Angeles.

Is this, Tokovsky wondered, the right historical moment for those caricatures and video (which shows them arguing at the White House and in the desert, using digital special effects)?

Yes, he decided. He reasoned that the Bush and Hussein figures simultaneously demonstrate a new trend in puppetry technology and update the centuries-old tradition of using puppets as tools for grown-up political commentary. Results so far?

“I’m very happy that I put it in there,” Tokovsky said. “Apparently, there have been a few people who turned off the monitor. But kids have been very drawn to it. It’s definitely something I’m going to continue to watch.”

-- Christopher Reynolds