Strange museum closes near Kansas City after 39 years. But there’s good news
Hair. Human hair. Hair woven into jewelry, wreaths, keepsakes. Michael Jackson’s hair. Marilyn Monroe’s hair.
Hair as art, hair as spectacle.
It was Leila Cohoon’s world, and she showcased it all at Leila’s Hair Museum, located in an otherwise unremarkable freestanding building on Noland Road in Independence.
Cohoon died in November at the age of 92, and as of last week, her family has decided to close her surreal attraction — the only museum of its kind in the world, open since 1986.
That’s the bad news. The good news is that the four grandchildren to whom she bequeathed the museum have spent much of this year identifying new owners for these one-of-a-kind artifacts.
“It was my grandmother’s greatest wish that people keep seeing the pieces,” said Lindsay Evans, Cohoon’s granddaughter. “I think she always hoped we’d all just quit our jobs and take over the museum. But we all have full-time jobs. So the next best thing was to rehome these pieces in other collections so people all across the country can see and appreciate them.”
So the collection isn’t gone. It’s scattering. Some pieces are headed to the Vaile Mansion, the Alexander Majors House, the John Wornall House, and the Atkins-Johnson Farm. Others will soon be on display at major art institutions including the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.
“I’ve been in talks with over 40 different museums,” Evans said. “Some are taking five or 10 pieces, some are taking as many as 50. And they’ll have a little plaque or display honoring my grandmother, her collection, and her passion for the art form. So in that way, even more people will experience the works than if we had kept it all in a small museum in Independence.”
A hair museum
Cohoon’s obsession began on the Country Club Plaza. Already a hairstylist, she went shopping for Easter shoes one spring day in the 1950s and spotted an antique hair wreath in a shop window. She bought the hair wreath, and, with it, a fascination that would shape the rest of her life.
Evans is taking that one for herself.
“My granddad always said that was the most expensive piece in the museum because look at what it started,” she said.
Hairwork as a craft flourished in the 18th and 19th centuries, when women braided and stitched strands into bracelets, rings, wreaths, and brooches. Some served as family trees, each loop of hair tagged with a name. Others were mourning keepsakes. But they were also tokens of friendship, or love, or just proof of who had once been in a room.
Because it happened in parlors and not salons, and because it was practiced primarily by women, hairwork never got much respect. It faded into attics and antique shops.
Cohoon pulled it back out. Soon she and her husband, Don, were hunting down hairwork at every antique shop they passed.
By the mid-1980s, the collection had outgrown her house. Cohoon moved it into her cosmetology school on 23rd Street in Independence, then later into its own storefront on Noland Road. Visitors who might have expected a history of perms and dyes instead discovered 3,000 intricate works of art, built up over generations. Some wreaths held strands from more than a hundred relatives.
Then there was the celebrity wall: locks said to belong to Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, John Lennon, Ronald Reagan. A brooch contained Daniel Webster’s hair. Other reliquaries purported to hold strands from the Virgin Mary and even Jesus himself.
“(Cohoon) always said she thought they were all legit, but I was never so sure,” Evans said.
After Cohoon died, her daughter, Linda Clifford, kept the tours alive by appointment. But that’s been winding down in recent months, and the family decided to officially close the museum at the end of September.
Cohoon’s career stretched far beyond collecting. She co-founded the Independence College of Cosmetology, styled contestants at Miss America, and spent decades training stylists, running salons, and distributing beauty products across the Midwest.
But the museum was her baby. Travel & Leisure called it one of America’s strangest attractions. Mike Rowe filmed an episode of “Somebody’s Gotta Do It” there. Phyllis Diller sent her a piece of hair art after reading about the museum in People magazine. Ozzy Osbourne came for a visit. Cohoon welcomed them all into her sanctuary of strands.
“All I know is hair,” she once told The Star. “And I know all there is to know.”
This story was originally published October 6, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
