As a local Jewish artist, I’m deeply saddened by the announcement of the yearlong closure of the Contemporary Jewish Museum starting on Dec. 15 — and especially by the timing of the closure, when public expressions of Jewish identity are more important than ever.
This is a collective loss. So many of us have a personal relationship with the CJM. As a Jewish cultural institution, it is a unique gathering place in San Francisco for our community to celebrate Jewish culture and new Jewish arts in the making.
The CJM is my Jewish home, my muse, inviting me to make art on Jewish themes and explore new ideas. It is where I have shown my artwork, attended lively openings, presented and listened to artist talks, taught and been to workshops for all ages. I have thoroughly enjoyed and appreciated working with the museum’s many dedicated curators, administrators and educators, as well as interacting with the various directors, board members and museum staff through the years.
It is important that we see our diverse Jewish identities represented in institutions of culture. With its central location in the downtown arts district, the CJM has done that beautifully. Among the exhibits that left a mark on me was the community call for photos to be included in “Being Jewish: A Bay Area Portrait.” This collage of Jewish life, exhibited from the museum’s opening in 2008 through 2011, was a momentous welcome for the local community.
Over the years, I have debuted new Jewish artworks created for CJM exhibitions and participated in almost all of the museum’s invitationals. Thanks to the Dorothy Saxe Invitational, I now have brought into existence a personal collection of contemporary feminist Jewish ritual objects that I likely would not have created otherwise. The invitational is also a fundraiser, so I have appreciated the opportunity to sell my work and to receive a percentage of the sales. The CJM treats artists fairly and honorably.
The CJM has invited many non-Jewish artists to engage with Jewish ideas, as it did for the 2021 Dorothy Saxe Invitational, whose theme was “Tikkun: For the Cosmos, the Community, and Ourselves.” For that diverse, yearlong exhibition, I showed my “Universal Golden Rule Project” in the large museum windows on the Yerba Buena Lane side of the building and hosted conversations about attempting to live by the Golden Rule.
The CJM also has exhibited many internationally esteemed artists who happen to be Jewish but don’t have overt Jewish content in their art. We have been treated to the works of such notable culture makers as Leonard Cohen, Judy Chicago, Amy Winehouse, Allen Ginsberg and Sophie Calle. In addition, exhibits by prominent non-Jewish artists, like Andy Warhol’s prints of Jewish luminaries and Kehinde Wiley’s portraits of Israeli men, showed us how the world sees us. Exhibits of Jewish artists and thinkers, including “Chagall and the Artists of the Russian Jewish Theater,” Arthur Szyk and “The Art of the Haggadah,” Charlotte Solomon’s “Life? or Theatre?” and Gertrude Stein’s collection of artifacts and art, have provided historical perspective. And we marveled at illustrations while laughing along with Maurice Sendak, Maira Kalman and Roz Chast.
Another CJM priority has been reaching out to the wider Bay Area community with diverse shows, lectures, concerts and films. At this critical moment in time, with rising antisemitism caused in large part by ignorance about what it means to be Jewish, a cultural institution like the CJM is a place to welcome people so they can connect, share stories, learn and hopefully understand the diversity of American Jews.
As a 21st-century Jewish artist, I value the fact that the CJM is a living museum, without a focus on a permanent collection, creating opportunities for exhibitions and cultural programming that not only respond to current realities but set a path forward.
Author Toni Morrison issued a call to action that feels fitting right now: “This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language.” We artists will continue to make new Jewish culture, and we will be ready when the CJM reopens. See you again soon.