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Contemporary ArtFilm & VideoArchitecture & DesignJewish Culture & Ideas

Reinventing Ritual: Contemporary Art and Design for Jewish Life

Apr 22, 2010–Oct 3, 2010

Rituals are embedded in everyday life, whether established by religion, culture, or family, and are continuously performed and reinvented by each generation to provide meaning and sustenance for a fulfilling life. Reinventing Ritual examines a modern hybrid of the prescribed and the personal as contemporary artists tailor Judaic rituals to their own values, identities, and needs.

about the exhibition

Reinventing Ritual is the first international exhibition to examine how artists are transforming traditional practices into opportunities for contemplation and critique. The exhibition surveys works by more than fifty-eight artists, including Oreet Ashery, Jonathan Adler, Helene Aylon, Galya Rosenfeld, and Allan Wexler, who are exploring Judaism as a vital, multicultural, and contradictory force. Working in diverse media, like installation art, video, comics, ceramics, textiles, industrial design and architecture, the artists seek common values and authentic experiences to render Jewish practices open and inclusive.

Jewish ritual objects and their broader significance have been a major focus of The Contemporary Jewish Museum (The CJM)’s exhibition program, as exemplified by the invitational exhibition series. The CJM’s Invitationals invigorate Jewish material culture and heritage by inviting artists of diverse backgrounds to create new interpretations of Judaica and ritual.

Reinventing Ritual creates an invaluable platform for our diverse audience to explore the role of ritual in strengthening identity and building community. The works on view interpret Judaism as a living, changing experience, rather than one fixed in text or custom. To that end, they are arranged in four thematic nodes: Thinking, Covering, Absorbing, and Building. These themes focus on ritual as physical action related to specific acts such as eating, drinking, counting, smelling, lighting candles, and praying, essentially grounding them in things shared by all people–food, clothes, the environment.

image gallery
press
May 13, 2010

Open, affirming & diverse: The gay-inclusive spirit of the Contemporary Jewish Museum, Bay Area Reporter

Apr 23, 2010

Ritual renegades: CJM exhibit puts modern spin on traditional objects, J.Weekly

Apr 22, 2010

Take Five: Jewish Ritual and Vietnamese Poetry, NYTimes.com Bay Area Blog

Apr 16, 2010

Nights at the Museum, When Fun Trumps Art, The New York Times

supporters

Reinventing Ritual: Contemporary Art and Design for Jewish Life has been organized by The Jewish Museum, New York, and made possible through the generosity of the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies, the Leir Charitable Foundations, and the Joyce and Irving Goldman Family Foundation. Additional support was provided through the Melva Bucksbaum Fund for Contemporary Art and the Office of Cultural Affairs, Consulate General of Israel in New York.

The San Francisco presentation has been made possible by the lead support of The Bernard Osher Jewish Philanthropies Foundation of the Jewish Community Endowment Fund and the Jewish Community Endowment Fund of the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties. Major support has been provided through the generosity of Randee and Joe Seiger. Additional support has been generously provided by Joyce Linker and Dorothy and George Saxe.

The Koret and Taube Foundations are the lead supporters of the 2009–2010 exhibition season.

Image Credit

Studio Armadillo: Hadas Kurk (Israeli, b. 1970) and Anat Stein (Israeli, b. 1972), Hevruta-Mituta, 2007. Plastic chess board, thirty-two knitted skullcaps, 2 3/8 x 27 1/2 x 27 1/2 in. (6 x 70 x70 cm). Courtesy of the artists.