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Exhibition Reviews
"A Perfect Fit: The Garment Industry and American Jewry, 1860–1960." Yeshiva University Museum, 15 West 16th St., New York, NY 10011.
Temporary exhibition, Dec. 4, 2005–April 2, 2006. 4,500 sq. ft. Sylvia A. Herskowitz, project director; Gabriel Goldstein, curator.
A Perfect Fit: The Garment Industry and American Jewry, 1860–1960. Exhibition catalog (New York: Yeshiva University Museum, 2005, 96 pp. Paper, $24.95.) Available through the Yeshiva University Museum.
Internet: exhibition description and highlights, text, photographs, upcoming events, and catalog ordering and membership information, http://www.yumuseum.org/APerfectFit/index.html.
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| The history of the American garment industry is not an unusual subject for a museum exhibition (some recent examples include the Smithsonian Institution's "Between a Rock and a Hard Place: A History of American Sweatshops, 1820–Present" and "Piecing it Together: Immigrants in the Garment Industry" at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum). The role of American Jewry in the industry, however, is a topic that has not been widely treated. One would not think it a particularly controversial subject though, given the well-known prevalence of Jewish owners and workers in the manufacturing and sales of American clothing. Indeed, it also falls within the genre of "ethnic niche" labor-industrial history—for example, Germans in the beer industry, Italians in the longshore industry—which details the history, economics, and culture of, and trajectories followed by, specific immigrant ethnic groups in America. The underlying premises of Yeshiva University Museum's "A Perfect Fit: The Garment Industry and American Jewry, 1860–1960" were that Jews dominated the industry (although the only statistics the exhibition gave were for New York City, where, by the turn of the twentieth century, 75 percent of garment industry workers were Jewish), and that apparel production, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, was particularly well suited to Jewish immigrants as a means of gaining a foothold in the American economy. |
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The main theme of the exhibition, however, went further than showing that the history of the garment industry is inextricably bound up with the growth of American Jewry. It also revealed that this marriage was "a perfect fit," with each partner owing its success in part to the other. The show was thus not a neutral exploration of the convergence of the two, but rather an explicitly stated dual success story—America became a preeminent center of international fashion (both in design and production), and American Jewry grew and prospered (and later assimilated into other arenas) by taking advantage of the growth of this key industry. |
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In this celebratory light, the exhibition treated the visitor, through the medium of material culture, to a fascinating unfolding of the story of American garment production beginning in the 1860s. Unlike many U.S. history exhibits developed over the last few decades, "A Perfect Fit" did not choose, however, to focus on the role of ordinary Jewish garment workers, whose labor and skill, in concert with machinery, drove production and commerce. On the contrary, the exhibit examined, in much biographical detail, the well-known entrepreneurs who built and owned the key manufacturing companies. That this bias was barely noticeable flows from years of grade school conditioning in which history is often presented and organized around the great men of the period who were talented, visionary, and made things happen by taking advantage of fortunate historical conditions. |
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The orientation gallery of the show, called "Voices of the Industry," with text panels on specific industry leaders, revealed that focus at the outset: "For this exhibit, Yeshiva University Museum is fortunate to have had the assistance of many garment industry leaders. Their first-hand knowledge has greatly enriched this project. Multi-generational family histories add a personal dimension to the saga of American Jews in the garment trades." (The lead sponsors, in fact, included individuals and foundations associated with the industry, such as the Levi Strauss Foundation and Lynn Syms and Sy Syms.) |
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