Inspired by Jerusalem

In a departure from its historical exhibitions, the Tower of David museum is revelling in the rarified worlds of haute couture and industrial design this summer.

By CARL HOFFMAN
Renana Raz models designs by Raziella for Alexanda Shlomzion (photo credit: Tamar Karavan)
Renana Raz models designs by Raziella for Alexanda Shlomzion
(photo credit: Tamar Karavan)
French Post-Impressionist painter Édouard Leon Cortès drew constant inspiration from the rainy streets and boulevards of fin de siècle Paris. Film director Federico Fellini was famously in love with Rome, and Yasujir Ozu stayed obsessed with the city of Tokyo throughout his filmmaking career. Dublin was the muse for James Joyce, and Samuel Johnson insisted that whoever tires of London tires of life.The gritty, down-at-heels Los Angeles of the 1940s loomed large in the novels of Raymond Chandler, while playwright Tennessee Williams was enthralled by New Orleans. And both Woody Allen and singer-songwriter Billy Joel will perhaps forever remain in their “New York state of mind.”
Perhaps no city, however, has exerted as great a hold on the creative spirit as Jerusalem. It has inspired – and continues to inspire – artists and thinkers of every stripe and sort. For thousands of years, the Holy City, the City on the Hill, Jerusalem of Gold has worked its way into the hearts and minds of painters and poets, sculptors and singers, photographers and philosophers, journalists, diarists, novelists, short story writers and, of course, fervent followers of three - often competing - world religions.
And now the city has begun to cast its spell even on the rarified worlds of haute couture and, believe it or not, industrial design. These surprising developments are evident at Jerusalem’s Tower of David Museum, where a program of exhibitions called “Summer of Inspiration” is in full swing. Throughout the summer and fall, the museum will showcase a broad spectrum of Israeli fashion and industrial designers engaging in a dialogue of color, materials and form that blend contemporary design with the city of Jerusalem, its symbols, images and effects on hearts and minds.
The program consists of two simultaneous exhibitions. “Threads” displays fashion creations inspired by famous women in Jerusalem’s history, and “Suspicious Objects” features the work of designers inspired by the familiar symbols of the city - buildings, streets and neighborhoods, as well as its zealous inhabitants.
Both exhibitions in this summer of inspiration are the initiative of the Tower of David Museum’s new director, Eilat Lieber.
“This summer, we decided to do something different,” she says. “Usually, the museum deals with the history of Jerusalem. But this time, we decided to do something full of color. We decided to reach out to Israeli designers and think with them. The result is these two exhibitions – one about Israeli fashion, and the other about Israeli design, and both inspired by the city.”
As it turned out, putting it all together was not so easy. “Jerusalem has always been a source of inspiration for artists, but these days it’s different,” says Lieber. “The feelings about Jerusalem today are so different. So when we were talking about fashion, we had to bring the designers from Tel Aviv because you can’t find even one studio here in Jerusalem today. The curator of ‘Threads’ had to come from Tel Aviv because I couldn’t find one here. Jerusalem is different these days, but we wanted them all to come here, to see this beautiful place, to feel the city, to walk around in the small streets and learn about our Jerusalem, and then to go back to their studios, work with their material and create something new for this wonderful city. It was a great project, like a journey. We didn’t know what we were going to see in the end.”
In “Threads,” we see 10 designer dresses, each created for an influential woman in the history of Jerusalem. These imaginary fashion consumers include such women as the Queen of Sheba; Empress Helena; Queen Melisende, first native-born ruler of the Crusader period; Salome Alexandra; and Hemda Ben-Yehuda. There are one or two surprises among the list, such as playwright and poet Else Lasker-Schüler and Shira – not a real woman at all but the title character of the novel by S. Y. Agnon, set in the Jerusalem of the 1930s and 40s, and published in 1971.
Ten leading Israeli fashion designers were chosen for the project, each paired with one of the historical figures. Dina Glass, Raziella, Tamar Primak, Rachel Cohen and Karen Oberson were some of the designers chosen to participate. Each designer was asked to imagine what she would create if, for example, the Queen of Sheba walked into her atelier and asked her to design a dress “just for her.” Working with everything she knew or could learn about the historical figure – her personality, spirit and taste – the designer would let intuition and creativity assist her in making the dress. Each designer was told to focus on the woman’s personality – as much of that as one can infer – and not on the period in which the lady lived.
The director of this extraordinary bit of matchmaking is exhibition curator Tamar Karavan. How did she decide which fashion designer to pair with each great lady from Jerusalem’s history? 
“First of all, I wanted to be sure that each designer could relate to the particular woman because for me, this was the most important thing,” she says. “If she didn’t like her or if something about her didn’t work for her or if she didn’t get passionate about her, I didn’t want her to make the clothing. It was funny. I felt like a matchmaker because each one of the designers called me and said, ‘Thank you! How did you know that I would love to do this?’ And they were ecstatic about it. And what I told them was, ‘Don’t think about anything besides what the woman would enjoy wearing.’” 
But that was not the end of the process. Once each dress was made, another woman was selected to be photographed wearing it. The woman had to model the dress at a place in Jerusalem where the historical figure was likely to have worn it when she was alive. Among the “models” selected were actress Keren Mor, writer Zeruya Shalev, choreographer Renana Raz and singer Ester Rada. Actress Dana Ivgy, for example, wearing a dress by designer Aluma that was inspired by Queen Melisende, was photographed in the Crusaderperiod Tower of David Citadel Courtyard. 
“What was really interesting to me was that each piece of work was like a triangle,” says Karavan. “There was the historical woman, then there was the designer, and then the woman modeling the dress. I felt that the moment I took the photo was the moment that all the points connected. For example, the moment with Shira, when we took her picture in S. Y. Agnon’s house, we were all shivering. Because we felt like Agnon was around and that he was happy that we finally brought Shira to his home.I mean, he couldn’t do that. It was a bunch of living triangles, with 30 women,” she explains.
“Zeruya Shalev the writer really wanted to be the playwright Else Lasker- Schüler. And we took a picture of her in the Rehavia neighborhood where Else Lasker-Schüler lived and where Zeruya lives now. And Agnon’s Shira was German, and the model for her clothes is German - from the same town! So when we took these pictures, everything came together. That was the moment that I knew it was going to work,” says Karavan.
“Suspicious Objects,” the companion exhibition of Jerusalem-inspired design, also works, but in a very different way.
“When you think about the expression ‘suspicious objects’ here in Jerusalem, it’s always a bomb or some other bad thing,” says curator Tal Gur. “But this is an exhibition of ‘good’ things, good things that might make us uncomfortable because they are new. Suspicion of anything that’s new or different or foreign is a basic survival instinct. The suspicion instinct protects us from anything outside our comfort zone that threatens to disrupt it and bring disorder. Only curiosity and open-mindedness have the power to overcome this primal fear, to break open the defenses that surround us and expand our emotional and cognitive world.”
The suspicious objects chosen for this exhibition are designed to do just that. Up in the museum’s Phasael Tower – the very spot from which watchmen once gazed beyond the city walls and warned of the approach of the “new and suspicious,” – the visitor is treated to design objects such as “In the Eye of the Beholder,” a wooden puzzle with assembly instructions in Hebrew, Arabic and English. Follow the Hebrew i n st r u c t i o n s and you will build the Western Wall. Follow the instructions in Arabic, and you construct the Dome of the Rock. The end result of following the English instructions is the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Three languages, three assembly instructions, three different holy religious sites, all from the same little pieces of wood. Are designers Oded Gov and Adi Paz-Fingold merely suggesting that all three structures are made from the same Jerusalem stone, or are they implying that all three religions spring from the same Middle Eastern psychic impulse? Let the viewer decide.
The viewer can also ponder design objects that range from the whimsical – stray Jerusalem street cats wearing tied-on Lion of Judah manes – to the cleverly flippant: a carrying case for a Mac iBook computer designed to look like a blue velvet tallit bag, as well as a necktie designed to resemble a jihadist’s keffiyeh. Some objects are designed to amuse, others perhaps to outrage. But all the objects invite us to think and to test some of our basic assumptions. The incendiary tops of a pack of safety matches are designed to look like the skyline of Jerusalem’s Old City. The object, created by designers Roi Vaspi Yanai and Dan Hocberg, is called “Jerusalem is Inflammable.”
And we have all seen souvenir snow globes that display iconic landmarks like London’s Big Ben and Paris’s Eiffel Tower. Designers Mey and Boaz Kahn’s snow globe from Jerusalem features the towers of the controversial Holyland Development. Shake it, and stardust falls instead of snow.
With these two concurrent exhibitions, Lieber is clearly taking the museum in some new directions and reaching out to new audiences.
“I hope we can attract people who have never been here before,” she says. “You know, history and archaeology are very interesting for us, but not everyone is interested. But fashion and design are ways to bring other people here, perhaps younger people, perhaps people from Tel Aviv – people from other cultural worlds. I hope these exhibitions will reach a large, new audience. I want this museum to be relevant to today’s world.”
Inspired by visits to such institutions as the Museum of London, Lieber declares, “I want to make the Tower of David not just a museum about the history of Jerusalem. I want this to become the museum of the city of Jerusalem.”
“A Summer of Inspiration: Threads and Suspicious Objects” will run until October 4 at The Tower of David Museum, Old City, Jerusalem. For further information, call 626-5333, 626-5310 or visit http://www.towerofdavid.org.il.