{"id":536,"date":"2021-04-01T18:58:19","date_gmt":"2021-04-01T22:58:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/slis.simmons.edu\/blogs\/lis476\/?p=536"},"modified":"2021-04-01T18:58:19","modified_gmt":"2021-04-01T22:58:19","slug":"stitching-history-from-the-holocaust-exhibit-at-jewish-museum-milwaukee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/slis.simmons.edu\/blogs\/lis476\/?p=536","title":{"rendered":"\u201cStitching History from the Holocaust\u201d Exhibit at Jewish Museum Milwaukee"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Amanda Miano<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cPaul and Hedy Strnad are trapped as the Nazis close in. Can Hedy\u2019s dress designs and their cousin in Milwaukee help them get to the United States? All efforts failed. Hedy and Paul perished in the Holocaust, but their memory lives on in the letter and sketches which form the core of this haunting exhibit. Come and experience Hedy\u2019s designs brought to life\u201d (Stitching History from the Holocaust<\/em>).<\/p>\n

\u201cStitching History from the Holocaust,\u201d was an exhibit on display from September 14, 2014 to March 1, 2015 at the Jewish Museum Milwaukee and is \"\"currently touring across the United States. For this unique exhibit, the Jewish Museum Milwaukee partnered with the Milwaukee Repertory Theater to create dresses based on Hedy Strnad\u2019s designs. The museum\u2019s goal was to do more than present Hedy and Paul\u2019s story. Rather, \u201c. . . completing this project for [Hedy was] a meaningful act of memorialization, as it [brought] Hedy\u2019s talent and creativity into the current day\u201d (UW-Milwaukee Digital Humanities Lab).<\/p>\n

It is important, when considering the impact of this exhibit and how it promotes the museum\u2019s vision, to understand the Jewish Museum Milwaukee\u2019s mission statement which reads as follows: \u201cThe Jewish Museum Milwaukee is dedicated to preserving and presenting the history of the Jewish people in southeastern Wisconsin and celebrating the continuum of Jewish heritage and culture. . .\u201d (About<\/em>). To fully understand how this exhibit complements the museum\u2019s overall mission, we need to take a closer look at the Strnad\u2019s story.<\/p>\n

Paul Strnad wrote a letter in 1939 to his cousin, asking for help in securing an \"\"affidavit, necessary for he and his wife to escape Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia. Paul also sent eight of Hedy\u2019s dress designs, as a way of proving that the couple could secure an income if they were allowed to immigrate. Sadly, the couple were imprisoned before they could secure safe passage and were eventually murdered in a concentration camp. The letter and sketches were not discovered until 1997, when the Strnad\u2019s of Wisconsin found them in the basement of their family home. They donated the documents to the Jewish Historical Society in Milwaukee. These items became part of the Jewish Museum Milwaukee\u2019s permanent collection when it opened in 2008.<\/p>\n

For a museum whose focus is on \u201c. . . preserving and presenting the history of the Jewish people in southeastern Wisconsin and celebrating the continuum of Jewish heritage and culture . . .,\u201d it is obvious why they would want to make people aware of this couple who sought refuge with their cousins from Wisconsin (About<\/em>). Furthermore, this exhibit is dedicated to celebrating the continuum of Jewish culture, in that it presents the artistic abilities of one Jewish woman who should have lived to see her creations take form.<\/p>\n

Now it is time to consider how this exhibit has aided the museum in promoting advocacy and outreach within the larger Milwaukee community. Using the \"\"dresses as sources of inspiration, the Jewish Museum Milwaukee partnered with Arts@Large, a local arts education organization, and with Milwaukee Public Schools to allow a select group of 7th<\/sup> and 8th<\/sup> grade girls to take a behind the scenes look at the work that goes into costume designing. The eight girls who were chosen spent time with the staff of the Rep\u2019s Costume Shop, where they learned more about Hedy\u2019s dress designs and the hard work that went into designing and crafting these dresses. The girls were tasked with documenting their experience through photography and then, as a way of \"\"reflecting on all that they had learned, they were instructed to paint life-size self-portraits based on Hedy Strnad\u2019s sketches. By allowing the girls this opportunity, the museum and Arts@Large not only gave them a space to showcase their own work (as each of their portraits were featured in an exhibition at the Arts@Large gallery), but also gave visitors the opportunity to see Hedy\u2019s dresses worn by the next generation.<\/p>\n

While Hedy Strnad never did get to see her dresses in all their beauty, her name will live on through her artistry. When they were fabricating her dresses, the Rep\u2019s Costume Shop gave each piece a \u201cHedy Original\u201d label, \u201c. . . allowing her to posthumously have the fashion line taken from her by the Holocaust\u201d (UW-Milwaukee Digital Humanities Lab). So, while the Nazis took her life, they could not erase her from the memories of those who, thanks to the Jewish Museum Milwaukee, have been able to view her beautiful creations at the \u201cStitching History from the Holocaust\u201d exhibit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Amanda Miano \u201cPaul and Hedy Strnad are trapped as the Nazis close in. Can Hedy\u2019s dress designs and their cousin in Milwaukee help them get to the United States? All efforts failed. Hedy and Paul perished in the Holocaust, but their memory lives on in the letter and sketches which form the core of … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “\u201cStitching History from the Holocaust\u201d Exhibit at Jewish Museum Milwaukee”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":433,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/slis.simmons.edu\/blogs\/lis476\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/slis.simmons.edu\/blogs\/lis476\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/slis.simmons.edu\/blogs\/lis476\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slis.simmons.edu\/blogs\/lis476\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/433"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slis.simmons.edu\/blogs\/lis476\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=536"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/slis.simmons.edu\/blogs\/lis476\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":541,"href":"https:\/\/slis.simmons.edu\/blogs\/lis476\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536\/revisions\/541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/slis.simmons.edu\/blogs\/lis476\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slis.simmons.edu\/blogs\/lis476\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slis.simmons.edu\/blogs\/lis476\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}