Reinventing Ritual: Contemporary Art and Design for Jewish Life
Reinventing Ritual is the first international exhibition to survey Jewish ritual as a vital site of experimentation in contemporary art and design since the 1990s. Nearly sixty groundbreaking works in diverse media, from jewelry to video to architecture, by 58 leading artists reveal the intersections of creative freedom and ethical practice.
Reinventing Ritual: Contemporary Art and Design for Jewish Life surveys the explosion of new Jewish rituals, art, and objects that has occurred since the mid-1990s. This period is defined by the urge to discover beauty and meaning in first premises—the roots and ruptures—when ritual could be radical. This attitude of innovation is shared by a wide range of artists inclusive of generation, nationality, and religion. Contemporary artists and designers focus on Judaism as a lived experience by transforming the physical acts of ritual into new forms.
Outstanding works of industrial design, metalwork, ceramics, video, drawing, comics, sculpture, installation, and textiles from Europe, Israel, and North America reveal the diversity within Judaism. The exhibition presents works in thematic groups and environments that suggest the spaces and situations in which ritual is performed.
Exhibition Design
The eco-Bauhaus exhibition design by Incorporated Architecture and Design magnifies awareness of the most innovative and contemporary elements of the artworks and embodies the old modernist ideals of the rational building stripped of ornament, combined with the postmodernist values of environmentalism and sustainability.
Reinventing Ritual: Contemporary Art and Design for Jewish Life is presented simultaneously with Rite Now: Sacred and Secular in Video.
Reinventing Ritual travels to the Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco, and a fully illustrated catalogue with essays by Julie Lasky, Danya Ruttenberg, Arnold Eisen, and Daniel Belasco was published in partnership with Yale University Press.
Reinventing Ritual: Contemporary Art and Design for Jewish Life is 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.
Media support provided by .

Studio Armadillo: Hadas Kruk (Israeli, b. 1970) and Anat Stein (Israeli, b. 1972), Hevruta-Mituta, 2007, plastic chess board and thirty-two knitted skullcaps, 2 1/4 x 25 x 25 in. (5.7 x 63.5 x 63.5 cm). Courtesy of the artists, Tel Aviv