As museum acquisitions go, this one was bittersweet.
More than 11,000 bunny items of every shape and size boosted the decimated collection of Altadena’s iconic The Bunny Museum Tuesday, when the museum, which lost its building in the Eaton fire, acquired the treasure trove of bunny miscellanea from the estate of Faye Clair Minaker Curtis.
Curtis was 92 when she died on Dec. 7, 2024. She had earmarked her cherished collection of bunny-themed things to The Bunny Museum in Altadena, which she visited when the museum in the late 1990s or early 2000s, when it was still housed in founders’ Steve Lubanski and Candace Frazee’s Pasadena home.
That visit sparked a collecting mania in Curtis, who began her bunny obsession in the 1970s, her family said. A pet rabbit’s unfortunate demise when it was chased with a vacuum wielded by her children so saddened Curtis her friends gave her bunny figurines to cheer her up. In the tradition of real rabbits, the collection multiplied through the decades. To her family, which in 2024 included 10 children, 28 grandchildren, 37 great-grandchildren, and 9 great-great-grandchildren, Curtis was “Grandma Bunny.”
In informing The Bunny Museum of Curtis’ bequest, her sister Marie Head told Frazee she is grateful the museum exists.
“We feel deeply that this is where her collection belongs,” Head, of Inman, South Carolina, said.
The bunny collection, in several black and yellow bins, was scheduled to be delivered to The Bunny Museum the first week of January. The Eaton Fire burned it to the ground on Jan. 7, along with more than 9000 structures. The blaze killed 18 people and caused damage estimated at $7 to $10 billion.
This week, Curtis’ treasures were finally delivered to the museum by her niece, Hannah Romeri-Head and her boyfriend, Sam Salameh.
Steve Lubanski, Frazee’s husband, stored the donations in a rented storage container, to wait for the museum reopening, “who knows how many years from now,” Frazee…
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