The CJM Blog

It's a good art exhibition that raises more questions than it answers. Some of those questions end up in our comment books, the bound black volumes that invite visitor feedback at the end of an exhibition. The comment book may seem like a retro convention. Social media has ushered in a whole industry dedicated to the capture and sharing of immediate impressions with large groups of people. But comment books have their advantages. Authors can take up as much space as they want, words can be enhanced and intertwined with images, and the flow of comments only moves forward, since remarks can only be seen by those coming to the exhibition after previous visitors have left their mark. Typical comments include praise or critique for curatorial decisions (we do read all messages), simple proofs of presence ("Jerry was here!"), and drawings from aspiring artists hoping perhaps to be discovered. Flipping through the books in the exhibition Beyond Belief: 100 Years ...

Inspired by our collaborative exhibition Beyond Belief: 100 Years of the Spiritual in Modern Art (on view now through Oct 27), the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Contemporary Jewish Museum hosted a day of mindful social media. Since “spirituality” means many things to many people, we thought it would be interesting to tackle the big questions raised by the exhibition in short, concise answers. Here’s an overview of the conversation by social media wranglers Kathryn Jaller (The CJM) and Willa Koerner (SFMOMA).

"Beyond Belief" makes me nostalgic. It’s a current exhibition  (the full title is  Beyond Belief: 100 Years of the Spiritual in Modern Art ). It’s also the opening track on Imperial Bedroom by Elvis Costello. Not the first record I owned. But the first one where I knew every word and thought I was the only one in the world who knew every word.

“Jackson Pollock is Jewish?” “Is this is how you define spirituality?” “How does it all come together?” Visitors to The Contemporary Jewish Museum’s (CJM) exhibition Beyond Belief: 100 Years of the Spiritual in Modern Art , co-presented with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), are delighted and/or surprised by what they find. Most have questions; some argue with the categories; others are awed into silence. And that’s kind of the idea.

A "before" image from SFMOMA's Instagram of their rooftop sculpture garden and cafe, and below a video documenting how the sculpture Zim Zum I was moved from this location to the CJM. The worst kept secret here at the Contemporary Jewish Museum (CJM) is that before they closed for renovation, a lot of us loved to have coffee and meetings in the rooftop sculpture garden of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA).