History Museums in Berkeley

The Bade Museum permanent collection is both ancient and modern and spans a period of 3,000 years. The museum holds a phenomenal array of everyday artifacts such as cooking pots, grinding stones, and agricultural implements from ancient Palestine along with colorful Greek and Cypriot ceramics, scarabs from Egypt, cuneiform tablets from ancient Mesopotamia, and over 300 historic Bibles from around the world. There are also ongoing educational lectures by visiting experts. There are docent led tours of the museum.

The musum was established in 2004.  It hosts an extensive collection of laces and textiles donated by Kaethe and Jules Kliot.  The collection has thousands of specimens from pre-Columbian Peru, the finest from the 17th century European courts and examples of the machine laces exemplifying the 19th centrury industrial revolution.  The museum also has a library that is home to over 10,000 books, patterns and articles. There are many tools of the textile arts including those used for lace-making and sewing machines. They also have free classes: http://lacismuseum.org/classes/

The museum is focused on the art and history of the Jewish experience. It has a wide ranging collection, provacative programs, research facilities and the largest history center relatiing to the Jews in the American West.