Claudia's tribute to Dr Geza

Source

We were saddened to read of the recent death of Dr  Geza Fehervari. Several Archive staff / education officers were welcomed by Dr Geza to the TRM in Kuwait over the years. His excellent books were gifted to our Library by Jehan. They are not only a great resource, they provide a legacy we will always treasure.

For both staff who met Dr Geza, and those who did not have the opportunity: Claudia Farkas Al Rashoud's absolutely wonderful tribute in the Arab Times is well worth reading.

Christine McMillan's exhibition "Gathering"

We'd like to wish Archive friend and supporter, Australian artist Christine McMillan, all the very best with the launch of her exhibition Gathering, tonight at Bathurst Regional Art Gallery.

That's Christine in the photo on the right, with Iman. This was taken at the opening of our traveling exhibition "Portraits without names: Palestinian costume" at Museum of Victoria's Immigration Museum in 2002.

We displayed our traveling exhibition "Portraits without names: Palestinian costume" at Bathurst Regional Art Gallery the year after (photo at left).

Christine came to visit our director and use parts of the Archive's collection for inspiration, quite a while before that. She was very interested in Palestinian costume and Sinai bedouin dress, and even created a hand dyed and embroidered thob herself, along with a stunning burqa series. Jeni incorporated some of these works of art into "Portraits without names: Palestinian costume" as a way of showing how wonderfully Palestinian traditions were continuing to inspire artists from all over the world.

You can find a photo of Christine wearing the thob on our website.

You can visit Christine's website here (there is a link to Christine's burqa series but it's not working at the moment, so here is one example on the right of her Oman Wahibi style burqa with shells voile, cotton thread and shells) and blog here.

The photo on the left is a detail from her Sinai Desert style burqa, one of the works that was in "Portraits without names: Palestinian costume". This is a postcard we sell here at the Archive.

Gathering opens tonight and runs from 17 August - 30 September, 2007. Christine is giving a talk at 11am tomorrow, Saturday 18 August.

(Photos: Christine McMillan, Jeni Allenby)

Friends of the Archive: Dr Jean in Gaza

While we have worked these last few weeks all our thoughts have been with our friends in Gaza, especially Dr Jean Calder of the Palestine Red Crescent Society (above, center, with her daughter Dalal on the right and our director on the left).

This photo was taken at Dr Fathi Arafat's apartment in Gaza City, last time our Director visited Gaza. We miss Dr Fathi too - he died in December 2004 - and always include him in our prayers.