Israel has the highest number of museums per capita in the world. They’re often in “bite size” pieces – you can spend about an hour or two in a museum dedicated to a single topic of focus – in this case, fashion in times of stress.

These small museums tend have lots of school groups – there a certainly a lot more field trips in Israel than America … and lot more interesting and less time-consuming places to visit. When I taught in the US, we went to Washington’s Headquarters in Morristown, the Paterson falls, and the Statue of Liberty … each was an … ordeal to arrange and go/return.

School group at the museum (note the yawn all the way at the right)

After visiting a good number of museums in Israel – a few thoughts: 1) before aliyah it hadn’t occurred to me that I’d be visiting this many museums or that they even existed; 2) the time frames are usually biblical or 1920 – 1950ish. It’s something like: “we have thousands of years of history here – let’s talk about how strong we were” and “let’s talk about how we turned overcame tragedy and adversity and are strong.” I’m not sure where we talk about the Byzantine Empire, Middle Ages, etc … maybe the people who care most are learning Jewish texts from those time periods.

Humanize when others seek to dehumanize

This particular museum – tells you a lot about Israeli culture … “we used whatever tools we had – even the smallest things we could get – to humanize when others sought to dehumanize.” It’s such a Jewish concept that is driven home even more when you’re here amongst Jews.

WWII ideal for a woman
WWII ideal for a woman
fashion for the dark
fashion for WWII
leather bag – 8 made in hiding to sell in Poland; one kept by the creator
made from scraps and worn by a woman under her holocaust clothing to preserve her individuality
fashion for WWII: took me a long time to figure out what that thing did
made right after liberation
this is actually from the Citrus museum (see blog entry 83) – note the similar style of the era and the ideal of the time

Comparisons to the MIT museum’s section about design

Compare to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT’s) museum with design and … you really see the difference in culture. MIT, a bastion of American authoritarianism masquerading as liberalism, has fashion design centered around negating the sexes for some dystopian future where men feel the pain of pregnancy t-shirts turned into a pillar of waste. MIT might be saying, “we hate who we are, and our stuff is junk.” That is so far removed from anything you’ll find in Israel.

The Design Museum in Israel is quite the opposite … “we have little to work with and we’re making big things.” During World War II people found the smallest threads, wires, and tools to make individual products to humanize themselves in the face of dehumanization. Left over maps, sacks of flour, and parachutes are made into dresses.

Exhibit of flour sacks made into dresses found in Israel

Pile of t-shirts found at the MIT museum as art

Compare this to MIT’s description of a pile of t-shirts … this is an actual quote that even AI couldn’t write as poorly: “The installation probes what it means to be American today through the techno-economic, socio-cultural, and environmental dimensions embedded in the T-Shirt, the iconic staple of the American culture.”¹

As hard as that is to parse, I’m going to try: “This ‘installation’ that even we know we can’t use the word ‘art’ to describe shows our cheap, mass-produced garbage with some politically correct terms and big words to make us sound smart.”

Ugh. Flour sack into clothing for holocaust survivors vs. anything described as “socio-cultural” embed in a T-shirt … my stomach hurts.

Bathroom signs

Maybe the MIT museum has a better bathroom sign – on the left: MIT museum bathroom sign.

MIT – wheel yourself away from the smell and prevent that evil man from dismembering the baby. Design museum: wheel yourself into a three evil Atari 2600 style monsters and kill them before time runs out.

Gift Shop

Also, as I’ve written time and again, Israel stinks at gift shops, this gift shop, this gift shop, and this one and a lot more. (Search ‘gift shop’ on this blog – there are at least 6 entries where I write about them in Israel). The MIT museum wins on this, by far, even with overpriced junk. Nothing compares to American materialism. This is the Design Museum’s – cute – though that’s about all you can say for it:

I’m not quite clear why the museum is called the “design museum” rather than … “WWII fashion adversity” – still, it’s a very interesting museum and perhaps more interesting than if it were what I expected from a place called a “design museum”.

Holocaust victim fashion designs brought alive

I like to start museums “top down” and ended with this prime powerful example of humanizing those who tried to dehumanize us:

These are actual sketches of Hedy Strnad of Czeckloslovakia, 1939 – she sent a letter to American relatives pleading for help getting a visa to work in America. The letter wasn’t opened for over 60 years (oops) and her family had long since died in a concentration camp.

They made her designs into clothing, complete with designer label and exhibits about the design/manufacture process: