PALESTINE COSTUME ARCHIVE
(located in the MESA Book Exhibit-
Egan Convention Center-Cook Hall)

The Palestine Costume Archive was established for safety in Canberra, Australia, in the early 1980s and is dedicated to the preservation and promotion of Palestinian and Middle Eastern cultural heritage via long term research projects, a worldwide museum quality travelling exhibition program, and accurate educational/public programs which reached over 33,000 people last year in Australia, Europe and the USA.  The Archive has three monographs on Palestinian cultural heritage forthcoming with European and American publishers and has five exhibitions currently touring internationally, including the highly acclaimed "Portraits without names: Palestinian costume" (which will tour the US and Canada in 2005) and “Symbolic defiance: Palestinian costume and embroidery since 1948” (which was displayed at the First World Congress of Middle Eastern Studies (Germany) and will be displayed at MESA 2003).
     The Archive works with over thirty Palestinian refugee embroidery projects and Middle Eastern women’s self help handicraft projects, and provides gratis curatorial, conservation and collection management expertise to Palestinian museums and collections (including refugee camp museums and Palestinian diaspora community collections).  The Archive also works closely with Palestinian region universities and education facilities and is currently producing the “Remembering Palestine” school resource kit and interactive CD Rom on Palestinian cultural heritage in conjunction with Bethlehem University (funded by the Barakat Trust, UK).
      For information, contact: Palestine Costume Archive, PO Box 98 Lyneham, Canberra, ACT 2602, Australia (Tel/Fax: +61 2 62480114; info@palestinecostumearchive.org; www.palestinecostumearchive.org).

Images courtesy of the Palestinian Costume Archive