PRO #39;ATA#39;
ATA `` - is not only already half-forgotten brand of textiles, but also clothing factory, which has become a national symbol. Exhibition dedicated to the history of the ATA `` - production history, the story of one family and a big dream - to pass in the Tel Aviv Museum of Eretz Yisrael until the end of March.
Existed for 50 years, the factory closed in 1985, having become a symbol of success, a social experiment, fashion, khaki and defeated ideas. After the story left a lot of memories, movies, photos, documents, poems and songs.
Tissue extracted from the silky white paper covered with glass windows, done a lot of research, released a documentary film about the founders of the factory family - the family Mueller - and about the production, and the name `ATA` s label with turn-down collar shirts migrated to the museum catalogs.
In the factory, #39;ATA#39; is not only intertwined strands of yarn, but the thread of Zionist ideas, social structure, financial insights, economic illusions.
Workers considered #39;ATA#39; their home - Erich Mueller built factory with dormitories, gardens, a polyclinic. `I` ATA was a hundred of shops. This factory wore the whole country, workers, soldiers and youth movements, has been the official supplier of the IDF, and before that - British police. `` ATA defined corporate identity at the time - what we call style, Ben-Gurion University. The famous symbol of Israel - Srulik, drawn by cartoonist Dyushem in 1954, wears the ATA `` - short, wide pants, shirt, `covariance tembl`.
The history of the factory #39;ATA#39; is inseparable from the history of Israel. One of its co-owners - Erich Müller - a native of Moravia (later he was joined by cousin Hans) came to the country in 1934 from Vienna. Open exemplary Jewish textile production he conceived back in Russia, where he spent seven years in captivity, having got there during the First World War as a soldier army of Czechoslovakia.
Once sighted than the other fellow, Mueller time immigrated to Eretz Israel in Kfar Ata and opened a branch of the family business, which existed in Moravia in 1885.
In 1935, the factory `` ATA was the largest textile company in the Middle East. `` ATA wore the entire working class of Eretz Yisrael, then constituted the majority of the population. Already in 1936, the factory began to send their products to Egypt, Syria and Lebanon. With the creation of the State of Israel #39;ATA#39; became the official supplier of uniforms for the IDF.
In 1955, began to increase competition from other textile factories, and it was decided the dismissal of workers, which led to a big strike in 1957. After the Yom Kippur War, khaki began to gradually go out of fashion, lost their social status. Since 1964, the ATA `` changed several owners, Fashion Collection, but for the 70 th year lagged far behind the European fashion, and in 1985 the factory gates were closed completely.
A sad story, but the spirit of #39;ATA#39; was strong and kept on display, memory, in photographs, posters, advertisements, dresses, form which factory produced more for the British police, historical documents and cartoons.
A special section of the exhibition are works of photographer Anne Rivkin-Breen, who in 1962 was invited to document the lives of the workers #39;ATA#39;. Rivkin-Breen was known as a photographer of a series of books about the children of the world - it was the most popular books for children of Japan and Lapland. In her photographs, and indeed in the very fact of its invitation to the factory affected the European tradition of respect for the craft.
Overall, Rivkin Bryn left behind 50,000 photos that were donated to the Central Zionist Archives in Jerusalem.
The exhibition#39;s curators have divided it into two main parts: the first part is devoted to the history of the factory itself and the Müller family, their world view, which united economic pragmatism, liberal Zionism and social education. Second - fashionable clothing brand #39;ATA#39;.
ATA exhibition `` - the story of production, fashion and dreams#39; will continue until March 30.
Museum working hours: Sunday to Wednesday - from 10.00 to 16.00 on Thursday - from 10.00 to 20.00 on Fridays and Saturdays - from 10.00 to 14.00.
Museum website -
http://www.eretzmuseum.org.il/
Address: Tel Aviv, Ramat Aviv, st. Haim Levanon, 2.
