The CJM Blog

Top: Elisheva Biernoff, The Tools Are in Your Hands , 2013. Courtesy of the artist and Eli Ridgway. Bottom: Shane Hope, atomic_kill_threads , 2012, Archival pigment print. Courtesy of the artist. The Encyclopedic Palace, the main exhibition of the 2013 Venice Biennale, borrowed its name from a utopian structure designed by self-taught artist Marino Auriti in the 1950s and intended to house all worldly knowledge. Visions of an idealistic future have inspired artists for centuries, but the utopian impulse has seemed especially timely of late. Returning to the original Greek etymology of the word, “no place,” contemporary artists are less likely to focus on a physical depiction of an ideal world, instead looking to more conceptual approaches to social amelioration. Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch wrote that utopia exists in the act of daydreaming, and artists’ renditions of utopia can sometimes mean no more (or no less) than that quietly radical definition. Work in...

Two current exhibitions address the culture of the kibbutz — Israeli communal agrarian societies in which life, labor, and pretty much everything else is often shared. This series of interviews explores local collectives of contemporary artists and asks the question, is it better to make art together? Aerial shot of Headlands Center for the Arts by Telstar Logistics In addition to nature, I’ve always said that the other thing I hold sacred in my life is art. When I discovered Headlands Center for the Arts a few years after moving here, I was struck by the transformation of WWII Army barracks into a community that connects to an international art world and places value on providing artists the space, the opportunities to exchange ideas with their colleagues, and a connection to landscape. I was thrilled to have the opportunity to drive out one evening after work and spend a few hours with two artists whose work is driven by the natural world and who have experienced their ex...

Title wall. Photo by Gary Sexton. Brian Scott is the Creative Director of Boon Design, and of our newest exhibitions which deal with the concept of utopia. We asked Brian what inspired this project, and he responded with a self-interview. Presenting Brian Scott interviewing Brian Scott on his process:   What was your approach to creating the identity for the exhibitions Work in Progress: Considering Utopia and To Build & Be Built: Kibbutz History ? I prefer to build from a typographic foundation, which helps to set a tone and tactile presence that we can then expand upon. For The Contemporary Jewish Museum, I first thought about the era during which the first kibbutzim were established, the early 1900s. What was the typography of that era? Was there a modernist typographic equivalent that shared an idealism with these the kibbutz pioneers? I believe that Paul Renner's font Futura (1928) embodies some of these utopian pursuits—Futura strives for geometric balance and h...

Oded Hirsch, Halfman , 2009. Chromogenic print, 40 x 50 in. Courtesy of the artist & Thierry Goldberg Gallery, New York.  Every fall, just after the holiday of Yom Kippur, Jews build a sukkah —an outdoor booth, open on one side, with a roof porous enough to see the stars. And here (traditionally) they eat and sleep for eight days, making a point of inviting in strangers for meals, and trusting in the fragility of the structure and the safety of their surroundings. Not unlike Burning Man, where each summer thousands of people set up temporary homes in the Nevada desert as part of a pop-up utopia, the ancient sukkah reminds us of the possibilities of a better world. This fall the CJM presents two complementary exhibitions—one about utopia, the other about the kibbutz—that ask fundamental questions about a perfectable community. In To Build & Be Built: Kibbutz History , the Museum explores the creation and evolution of this unique Israeli socialist venture. And in...