If you want to find out more about the history of teddy bears and are in New York, then you’re in luck. The NY Jewish Museum opened a teddy bear exhibition.
The New York City Jewish Museum explores the invention of the teddy bear in 1902 in Brooklyn, DPA reports. Well, at least the teddy bear as a name and current form.
There were teddy bears a few months before that in Germany, where Steiff started making them. It was later in the year though when US President Theodore “Teddy’ Roosevelt became the symbol of the teddy bear.
Here’s the full story on how that happened. So, when Roosevelt spared the bear cub, the local newspaper printed a comic depicting him as a small bear. A Jewish immigrant couple then started marketing plush bears as teddy bears and they became an instant hit.
Now Jewish artist Charlemagne Palestine made the exhibit “Chalemagne Palestine’s Bear Mitzvah in Meshugaland”. He follows his roots in Brooklyn where the teddy bears were made, too.
The exhibition features a room with a few hundred teddy bears and stuffed animals. They show some of the classic toys from the early 20th Century and trace their history. You can see various teddy bears and stuffed animals all over the room, including on pedestals, on big piles and more.
So, if you have the chance to check out the teddy bear exhibition, don’t miss out. It shapes up to be an interesting one.
