Reinventing Ritual: Contemporary Art and Design for Jewish Life

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.

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.