Levi Strauss | San Francisco’s Jewish Museum
KPIX’s Betty Yu talks with Heidi Rabben, Senior Curator of San Francisco’s Contemporary Jewish Museum. The museum opened the largest exhibition to date of material from the Levi Strauss & Co. archives for the worldwide exclusive presentation of Levi Strauss: A History of American Style. It will run until August 9th, 2020.
Transcript
contemporary Jewish museum’s latest
presentation of Levi Strauss a history
of American-style
just stay tuned to celebrate the birth of
the Blue Jean and showcases the life of
its founder and its influence on
American culture senior curator Heidi
Robin is here with us to talk about this
really special exhibit thanks for being
here thank you for having me so a lot of
people know that Levi’s is headquartered
here in San Francisco, they associated
him with this city but they don’t know
that he’s the Jewish immigrant who made
his way here to start his business
exactly and I think that’s almost
entirely the reason if not the strongest
the reason why we selected to do this
exhibition in partnership with Levi
Strauss and company at the contemporary
Jewish Museum knowing that this figure
is so important here for the local
legacy of San Francisco for the company
themselves for the nation and really for
the world but that his brand you know
and all of his business it all started
with the classic American story of an
immigrant coming to this country finding
his way and finding his success so it’s
a very important story a Jewish story
that we wanted to share we’re looking at
some of the photos now from these Civic
we’re talking about 250 rarely seen
items including Albert Einstein’s jacket
as we just saw yes we’re so lucky to
have on view Albert Einstein’s original
leather jacket Levi’s leather jacket
which has actually never been exhibited
anywhere publicly before so it’s a huge
huge opportunity to come and see this
jacket for the very first time publicly
this is the largest exhibition in the
world to date yes of Levi Strauss and
company’s archive that is correct so
almost 90% of the items that are
featured in the exhibition are on loan
directly from Levi’s drafts and
company’s archive and it’s the largest
exhibition ever assembled of items from
their archive thus far and I was able to
take a look at the exhibit myself and
what really struck me was how ubiquitous
the brand is across different decades
and also genres in music and pop culture
yeah what are some of your favorite
exhibit items it’s such a hard question
they chained almost on a daily basis but
it’s and I should mention that the
the exhibition spans a hundred and fifty
years of the life and legacy of the Blue
Gene itself so that actually goes
through many different moments of
evolution starting with the initial
purpose that they were crafted for which
was work we’re with miners and
farmers and Lumberjacks in the first
part of the nineteenth century and then
it transitions into Western where from
about 1900 to 1950 and ends up around
pop culture and counterculture from 1950
to the present day so there’s probably
favorites which he meets within each of
those distinct sections but one pair
that I would really call out is a
gorgeous very unique pair from the 70s
originally but they were actually
hand-drawn on over the course of 30
years by an inmate in prison over the
course of his sentence and they are
covered seam to seam in really intricate
personal very high-quality pen and ink
drawings that were very incredible yes
the clothes also Destiny’s Child yeah
the costumes that they wore yes there’s
an outfit on the view that Beyonce wore to
the VMAs I think it’s from 2009 that
VMAs and with Destiny’s Child that
war for Levi’s jeans that were very
customized with ribbons and I have to
point out Steve Jobs James display of
course here in the Bay Area you know who
do we know better in terms of local
style than Steve Jobs who was so well
known especially later in his life for
wearing Levi’s jeans always and Aniseh
Mahaki black turtleneck and the pair
that we have of Steve Jobs jeans on view
and the exhibition from the archives of
course is dated to the 1980s and we know
this because
there are some special buttons that were
added to the inside back seem to support
suspenders and when he was launching
Apple in the 80s was photographed
wearing suspenders with Levi’s jeans
that we assumed that it might be the
same pair wow so much to learn yes 150
years Heidi thank you so much for being
here with us
the museum has this exhibit on view
through August 9th August night yes and
you can of course get your tickets
online it’s at the contemporary Jewish
Museum through August 9 Thank You, Heidi
Thank You, Betty
