TODAY, Canberra Museum and Gallery assures us, Barbie can range from a glamorous bit of eye candy to an astronaut, but even having a PhD in physics is not enough to save her from criticism.

You’ll be able to explore the subject of dolls at the CMAG until November 22  in Julie Manley’s formidable display of 500 dolls and, as we learn, “dolls can be extraordinarily powerful little receptacles of meaning.”

Trained as a potter at art school Manley has a degree in art history and started collecting fashion dolls seriously in 2000. Manley now travels to the annual Integrity Toys convention in the USA and won their ‘One of a Kind’ competition in 2011.

Since 2000, she says, many other dolls have come onto the market that are far more ‘adult’ and sophisticated. There is an amazing world of artist dolls, small editions of resin ball-jointed dolls, movie, TV and popular comic dolls out there these days but there is very little literature on the meaning or significance of dolls, which have been with us for a long time.

Doll utensils have been found in Neolithic graves, and clothes for a doll in a Byzantine cemetery. The adult doll has a very long history but baby or child dolls did not come onto the market until about 1850.

Manley’s collection of fashion dolls combines her loves of sewing, fashion and women’s history. All her dolls have all been repainted or customised in some way. She repaints the dolls’ faces and has designed and made many of the outfits. Her collection includes dolls dressed in historical fashion, ethnic clothing and couture and also features costumes from film and television.

In the early 20th century fashion dolls were used by designers such as Madeleine Vionnet to work out her new dresses, many cut on the bias and requiring yards of expensive fabric. Costume design for movies is often replicated on fashion dolls, seen in the Gone with the Wind Barbie and Ken dolls by Mattel. As well, Manley relates, there has been an explosion of art and fashion dolls in the last 20 years or so, everything from the larger 16 inch Sybarites from Superfrock (designed by Desmond Lingard and Charles Fegen in 2005), and Kingdom Dolls, both from England, to the small art dolls called ‘The Enchanted Doll’ by Marina Bychkova.

“Fashion and Fantasy: 21st century fashion dolls,”   in the Open Collections Gallery space at Canberra Museum and Gallery, Civic Square until Nov 22, Monday-Friday 10am-5pm. Weekends noon -5pm.