July 6, 2021 - Birzeit: The Palestinian Museum celebrates the acquisition and arrival of important collections of material cultural heritage items to join its growing permanent collection. The Museum successfully recovered 240 historical items from the United States of America, consisting of 80 historical dresses (thobes), their accessories, and other embroidered pieces.
The collection arrived following the success of the Palestinian Museum’s first crowdfunding campaign, “Let’s Bring our Thobes Back Home”, launched in late November 2020. Three decades ago, this collection was sent from Palestine to the United States of America, where it was acquired and preserved by a group of Palestinian and Arab-American women, who constituted the Committee for the Preservation of Palestinian Heritage (CPPH), in the American capital, Washington D.C. The members worked tirelessly to present and display the dresses in exhibitions held across the country. Eventually, they decided that the collection should be preserved in a museum in its home country, hence its donation to the Palestinian Museum.
Adila Laïdi-Hanieh, Ph.D. Director General of the Palestinian Museum, stated at a reception and educational guided tour held to recognize Museum supporters, donors to the crowd funding campaign, and heritage experts: "The arrival of this historical collection to the Palestinian Museum is an important and significant accomplishment in the Museum’s quest to preserve Palestinian heritage. These important collectibles of tangible cultural heritage will be carefully conserved, restored, and used in knowledge production on Palestinian history and society, and as a tool to better understand the cultural and societal practices of Palestinian women.” She commended the role of all the supporters of this campaign, and the role of the women who preserved this collection throughout these years.
Upon the arrival of the collection in the Museum’s collections room, equipped to professional norms, specialized Palestinian Museum teams will embark on conserving, digitizing, and researching the histories of the pieces. The collection will also be spotlighted in a new video to be released online on July 18th 2021 titled: “Object-in-Focus: 80 Thobes and stories make it Home from the Diaspora,” featuring a discussion between Museum Registrar Baha Jubeh, and private collector and researcher in Palestinian embroidery, Maha Abu Shusheh, on the historical significance of the collection.
We are immensely grateful for the generous support of Bank of Palestine, the campaign’s platinum sponsor and the national beverage company.
This collection complements a recently donated collection of historical Thobes and accessories gifted to the Palestinian Museum by Dr. Nabila Nashashibi, a veteran medical practitioner and researcher now residing in France.
