“Overview”: Eyeglasses from the collection of Claude Samuel deals with the unique collection of eyeglasses of the optician Claude Samuel. The exhibition designer, Tal Gur, had to resolve exhibiting small, intimate objects in a 500sqm rectangle exhibition space. The exhibition shows over 400 items from the collection of over 1,000 pieces.

The history of eyeglasses is above all a history of culture, and they may thus be examined from countless perspectives. In this exhibition, we have chosen to examine them from a human point of view. The five Cultural Milestones that make up the display represent five cultural turning points at which eyeglasses played a central role in impacting human development. At the same time, these milestones also reflect the manner in which scientific progress and social change impacted our view of eyeglasses.

The journey to explore eyeglasses from the viewpoint of the observing eye begins in the world of medicine as an accessory for corrective vision, and ends in the world of fashion, where they have become a consumer object, from a hand-held accessory to an object worn on the user’s nose for longer periods of reading.