For the first time, the Council of American Jewish Museums will hold its annual conference in the Bay Area March 8-10. The host institutions are the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco and the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life in Berkeley.

More than 100 professionals and volunteers are expected to attend the conference.

Members of the CAJM span from the Alaska Jewish Museum in Anchorage to the Jewish Children’s Museum in Brooklyn, New York, to the Washington State Jewish Historical Society in Seattle.

This year’s 22nd annual conference is titled “Open Source: Jewish Museums and Collaborative Culture.” It will explore how California’s cutting-edge experiments in social, cultural, political and economic realms can inform museum practices, and how Jewish museums are breaking new ground by putting an emphasis on conversation and community over material collections.

In addition to the region’s two Jewish museums, the Oakland Museum California and the California Historical Society are providing meeting sites. The gathering will kick off March 7 with a visit to Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco for a behind-the-scenes look at the building.