The National Museum of Toy and Miniatures, on the University of Missouri-Kansas City campus, has one of the world’s largest public collections of historically significant toys and fine-scale miniatures.

The museum’s curators, Amy McKune and Madeline Rislow, talk to the four artists featured in the exhibition Transformations: New Perspectives on the Art of Miniatures, on view through May 20. They’ll discuss using transitory materials to fabricate models that can be manipulated as they work, their creative processes, and how small things inspire their paintings, photographs, and video art.

• New York artist Amy Bennett uses cardboard, foam, wood, paint, glue, and model railroad miniatures to construct fictional scale models that serve as an evolving still life for her detailed narrative paintings.
• Lori Nix and Kathleen Gerber, a creative team based in Columbus, Ohio, create complex dioramas that are transformed into archival pigment prints, focusing on the impact humans are having on our world.
• Carol K. Rasaphangthong creates homicide scenes in miniature that she uses as models for storytelling videos.