The beginnings of the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art lie in a collection of paintings donated by local resident Eugene da Villa to the Municipality of Herzliya in the early 1960s. These were exhibited at the Museum’s first home – an apartment at 15 Bar Ilan Street – and da Villa served as its first director. The current exhibition is part of the “Collection+” exhibition series, which seeks to explore and study the Museum’s collection and history – an introspective look that has made it possible to re-examine works that are usually stored out of sight, in the Museum’s storage rooms. Its primary focus is on portrait works created between the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, with particular emphasis on a somewhat unusual aspect: facial hair fashions and fashionable representational modes (oval portraits) and accessories (cigarettes and pipes). This lens makes it possible to explore a diverse and rather conservative collection of portraits from a contemporary perspective, which views fashion details as social and psychological cues.