One of the most innovative and internationally acclaimed artists working today, New York–based Mika Rottenberg (b. 1976, Buenos Aires) employs a disarmingly absurd sense of humor to confront the paradoxes of global capitalism and uncover the surprising ways in which we are all connected. This exhibition presents Rottenberg’s most prominent videos, installations, and sculptures of the past decade in the first museum survey of her work ever to be presented on the West Coast. Explore a collection of vividly colorful video installations and kinetic sculptures that uncover the surreal qualities of mass production and consumption.

Cara Levine: To Survive I Need You to Survive grapples with some of the most pressing issues of our time, including police brutality, climate change, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Through video, sculpture, and installation, the California-based artist uses her artistic practice as a means to explore and process grief around personal and collective traumas, highlighting how creative endeavors can facilitate healing and help mourners find meaning in community with one another. Visitors will have the opportunity to reflect on the works on view as well as participate in creating works in real time with the artist, both in the gallery and through public programs. Drawing on Jewish traditions, community practice, and interconnectedness, the exhibition invites visitors to explore installations and sculptural works that plumb the depths of the intimate and universal experiences of grief and regeneration.

The Contemporary Jewish Museum’s celebrated building, designed by world-renowned architect Daniel Libeskind, has served as an artistic, community, and cultural generator since its opening fifteen years ago. This exhibition delves into the deep symbolism imbued in The CJM’s iconic building. Inspired by the Hebrew phrase l’chaim (“to life”), used most often as a toast to mark moments of togetherness and celebration, the architecture of The CJM’s building embodies the values, traditions, and ideas The Museum explores within its walls. L'Chaim: Celebrating Our Building at 15 explores the multitude of symbols layered in the space we inhabit, unlocking the meaning behind its dynamic energy and allowing all who visit to experience the space anew.  

Bay Area artist Annie Albagli’s expansive video-based installation draws on Jewish tradition, local geography, and ritual to respond to a time of widespread isolation and a desire for human connection. Situated in The CJM’s intimate Black Box Gallery, the installation combines overlaid imagery and field recordings of the Marin headlands with crashing waves and Jewish ritual objects to offer visitors new ways to move through space, time, and familiar and unfamiliar places. Displayed for the first time in a solo museum exhibition, Albagli’s work both draws on and decontextualizes Jewish stories and local histories to break boundaries, explore our interdependence with each other and our world, and offer ways in which viewers can reimagine notions of space and self.  

The teen years are instrumental in the creation of a sense of self. They are also a critical time in the creation of what psychologists from The Family Narrative Lab at Emory University call the “intergenerational self”—a self embedded within a larger familial history. In the sixth iteration of What We Hold, teens have created individual audio recordings reflecting on and connecting with their families' stories of love, inheritance, and identity.

The Contemporary Jewish Museum commissioned artwork by Sacramento-based artist Dave Lane to be placed in its soaring lobby space. The massive sculpture, entitled Lamp of the Covenant, is a 90-foot-long, six ton work suspended high over the heads of visitors. Attached to an enormous oval of steel are antique objects: world globes, light bulbs, tools such as nineteenth century apple peelers and blow torches, and various other objects that suggest the unfolding marvels of the cosmos.