This exhibition presents newly commissioned works by sixteen contemporary artists in response to a selection of tales from Jewish folklore. Acting as modern maggids—storytellers, transmitters of knowledge, secrets revealers—they explore the many facets of these stories’ characters, themes, and metaphors. Artists include: Michael Arcega, Julia Goodman, Dina Goldstein, Andy Diaz Hope and Laurel Roth Hope, Vera Iliatova, David Kasprzak, Mads Lynnerup, Elisabeth Higgins O’Connor, Mike Rothfeld, Tracey Snelling, Chris Sollars, M. Louise Stanley, Inez Storer, and Young Suh and Katie Peterson.

Allison Smith's collaboration with Christina Zetterlund looks at craft and design history to explore issues of inclusion, exclusion, and hierarchies of power.

Kutiman, a young Israeli musician and composer, utilizes found audio and video from the Internet as the source of his own work. In 2016 the Tel Aviv Museum of Art worked with the artist as he developed the piece titled offgrid, comprised of twelve monitors that play a 38 minute-long video and music composition by Kutiman on a loop. These minutely edited snippets of music played by soloists found on the Internet are displayed on twelve monitors that periodically join in or go silent.

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.