Jun 6, 2024–Oct 20, 2024
The Museum’s first major open call exhibition invited Jewish-identifying artists in California to submit artworks in response to a central question: How are artists looking to the many aspects of Jewish culture, identity, and community to foster, reimagine, hold, or discover connection? The resulting exhibition brings together the work of forty-seven artists reflecting on their connection to Judaism, the world, and their own history. Through a wide range of media, including paintings, sculptures, interactive video games, video works, photographs, and more, the California Jewish Open illustrates some of the myriad ways in which these artists’ Jewish identity informs their connection to the world at large—and offers a window into the universal human need for connection in all its complexity.
Jun 6, 2024–Apr 27, 2027
Marking the first time the space has been activated in this way since the building’s opening, Bay Area artist Leah Rosenberg transforms The CJM’s Yud Gallery through light and color, creating a welcoming environment for visitors to reflect, rest, and wonder. In When One Sees a Rainbow, Rosenberg fills the gallery—a space itself created to celebrate light and its connection to Judaism—with new hues, exploring how the wondrous natural phenomenon of rainbows connects to our lives, light, and meditative practice. Inspired by the Jewish tradition of reciting a blessing upon seeing a rainbow, visitors will also be invited to create their own responses to the colors on view in the gallery. Enter a kaleidoscopic world of color and rediscover a familiar symbol of hope and awe.
Aug 31, 2023–Jul 28, 2024
Travel through some of the most electrifying moments in music history through the lens of Bay Area–based photographer Jay Blakesberg. RetroBlakesberg: The Music Never Stopped presents photographs of legendary musicians that reveal the evolution of San Francisco’s unique music culture and its wide-reaching influence. Featuring images of the Grateful Dead, Joni Mitchell, Tracy Chapman, Neil Young, Soundgarden, and many more alongside original tickets stubs, press passes, and other ephemera, this exhibition invites visitors to experience an electrifying visual history of the sounds and stories that have shaped the Bay Area and beyond.
Feb 16, 2023–Oct 20, 2024
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.
Mar 23, 2023–Jul 28, 2024
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.
Ongoing exhibit
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.