Trolls have taken over the lobby of the Ace Hotel. In the summer of 2016 when Reverend Jen Miller was evicted from her Lower East Side apartment, New York City lost its only Trolls Museum. Now, thanks to a collaboration between the Outsider Art Fair and Ace Hotel New York, Miller’s trolls have a temporary new home. The collection of colorfully coiffed dolls are making a comeback in a site-specific pop-up exhibit, Trolling a Hotel, where they can be found in a display behind the Ace Hotel’s check-in counter and scattered throughout the lobby.
A formal inventory of the collection has never been made but on the last attempted count there were more than 400 figurines including the first troll doll Miller got when she was nine years old. Though not the largest troll collection in the world, Miller prides herself on it being the most diverse. Among the classic rainbow-haired, jewel-bellied trolls you will find figures dressed in Santa outfits, metallic-skinned trolls, trolls dressed in doctor’s scrubs and figurines of all sizes.
Miller first opened her Trolls Museum inside her six-story Lower East Side walk up in the summer of 2000. The quirky museum garnered international attention and was beloved by locals as a remnant of the “real Lower East Side.” Miller added to her collection for sixteen years until the museum was forced to close as she was evicted from her apartment in 2016. The Ace Hotel pop-up is the first time the collection has been displayed since then.
Visitors can see the display for free by simply popping into the hotel’s lobby between now Sunday, January 20, 2019
Nicole Saraniero is the Insider-in-Chief at Untapped New York, leading our Untapped New York Insiders membership program. Nicole graduated from Hofstra University with a Bachelor of Science in Televis
