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The highly acclaimed traveling exhibitions of the Palestine Costume
Archive
have been displayed in Europe, Australia, Asia and the United States
since 1995, with five museum-quality exhibitions touring worldwide.
The most popular of these is Symbolic defiance: Palestinian costume
and embroidery since 1948 which last year was displayed at the First
World Congress of Middle Eastern Studies in Germany and this year
was to have been displayed in the United States at the MESA 2003
(Middle Eastern Studies Association of North America) annual
conference in Anchorage and the Arab Festival in Seattle, with
sponsorship provided by the Alaska Humanities Forum (Anchorage),
Humanities WA (Seattle), MESA and Saudi Aramco World.
However on 1 November 2003 the exhibition (which was being couriered
over to MESA 2003 by the Archive's director) was taken for a
security check/ x-ray at Los Angeles airport's Terminal 4 and has
not been seen since. All attempts by the Palestine Costume Archive,
Qantas, Alaskan Airlines and MESA to locate the exhibition over the
last three weeks have totally failed and the search has now been
abandoned.
The "loss" of this exhibition under such circumstances raises major
concerns for all museums and curators worldwide currently proposing
to tour Middle Eastern exhibitions to the United States and is a
matter that should be further investigated before other such
"losses" of Arab or Islamic cultural material occur. For the
non-profit, volunteer-run Palestine Costume Archive - the only
museum to make exhibitions of Palestinian cultural material
available on the international museum traveling exhibition circuit -
the loss is devastating and certainly puts in doubt the proposed
2005 tour to the United States and Canada of another popular Archive
exhibition, Portraits without names: Palestinian costume, which
contains a great many rare and irreplaceable 19th and early 20th
century Palestinian costumes on loan from international museums and
private collections.
http://www.palestinecostumearchive.org/exhibitions.htm
To withdraw availability of Palestinian cultural exhibitions to
American museums and conference venues such as MESA at this time is
against everything the Palestine Costume Archive works for. It is
therefore extremely important to the Archive to not only quickly
re-curate Symbolic defiance: Palestinian costume and embroidery
since 1948 but to do so in a form that can be risked in the United
States, where the exhibition has several venues confirmed in 2004.
To achieve this the Archive proposes to re-curate Symbolic defiance
in two separate display packages: one with a costume and textile
component (as displayed at the First World Congress of Middle
Eastern Studies, which will tour to all countries excluding the US)
and a second graphics only exhibition, which will continue to tour
the United States and thus be replaceable if such an incident of
"loss" occurs again. The Archive (which received no regular funding)
is seeking emergency funding to undertake this. If anyone can assist
in any way, please contact the Archive.
Palestine Costume Archive
PO Box 98 Lyneham, Canberra, ACT 2602, Australia
Tel/Fax: +61 2 62480114
info@palestinecostumearchive.org
http://www.palestinecostumearchive.org
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