San Francisco’s Contemporary Jewish Museum

It must be hard sometimes for northern Californians. Their southern brethren are the world’s most successful exporters of culture. As a result, the northerners have to deal with outsiders conflating California with Hollywood and all of the connotations that flow: endless surf beaches and arid deserts, Los Angeles sprawl and fad diets. In the minds of many, the qualification – northern – may as well not exist despite the distinctions it marks: Golden Gate harbours and redwood forests, urbane cityscapes and wholesome living. Monuments to Jewish culture face the same problem of inaccurate generalisations. There’s a Gibbon-like idea that they will be little more than a depressing register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind. So it’s unsurprising that the new Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco stands tall as a testament of a different ilk, a distinctly northern Californian celebration of the Jewish contribution to American culture.

The CJM isn’t about the Holocaust. It isn’t about the history of the global Jewish diaspora. It isn’t even about the history of the local Jewish diaspora, though northern California provides fertile ground. With famous locals including Levi Strauss and Isaac Stern, there would certainly be many local stories to explore – for example, why is one of the most famous figures of the Wild West, Wyatt Earp, buried in San Francisco’s Jewish cemetery? In fact, the CJM’s lack of historical perspective undermines its claim to be a museum – perhaps institute, gallery or academy would be a more appropriate label. Some would call the CJM forward-looking, while for others it’s simply myopic. The American press decried the CJM’s neglect of history, with the New York Times describing it as “a vision of Judaism as a kind of freewheeling allegory... which leaves behind Judaism’s fundamental, literal meanings – laws and texts and history”. CJM director Connie Wolf is unrepentant, saying that it is “not a place of reflection on tragedy, because the Jewish experience in California has not been a tragic one... if you say ‘Jewish museum’ most people think Holocaust museum or history museum, but we are neither”. Rather, the CJM seeks to act as a community builder, highlighting the relevance of Jewish culture and imagination as a universal heritage for all Americans. Its inaugural exhibitions illustrate this artistic focus: ‘From the New Yorker to Shrek: the art of William Steig’; ‘In the beginning: artists respond to Genesis’ and ‘The Alpha-Bet project’, a series of sound pieces based on letters of the Hebrew alphabet. There is even a permanent ‘writer-in-residence’ position, which is about as arty as it can get.

Though the CJM focuses on contemporary Jewish culture, its architecture is heavy with symbolism referencing eternal themes. The museum is situated within an abandoned power station, a site recently expanded by the addition of two new extensions designed by architect Daniel Libeskind. The extensions are in the shape of two Hebrew letters that together form the word ‘chai’, meaning life. In another symbolic touch, the lights in the lobby spell the word ‘pardes’, which in Hebrew is both a word meaning ‘garden’ and an acronym referring to a mode of Biblical interpretation whereby four levels of meaning are examined – the literal, the allegoric, the metaphoric and the mystical. Libeskind says that the letters “are the life source and the form of the Museum... in the Jewish tradition, letters are not mere signs but are substantial participants in the story they create”. Libeskind is certainly no stranger to using architecture to bolster the narrative that underlies structures such as the CJM. As director of the New York City World Trade Centre redevelopment, Libeskind renamed the site Memory Foundations and is building a Freedom Tower to reach a height of 1776 feet, a figure laden with significance in American numerology. The design of his Jewish Museum in Berlin references the Maagen David (Star of David), an ancient Jewish symbol that they were forced to wear by the Nazis.

The architecture of the 63,000 square foot CJM is very much a product of the present, however much it may draw upon the past. The heritage power station has been lovingly restored, with Libeskind’s additions grafted onto it like a pair of otherworldly, asymmetrical wings for a total cost of US$47.5m. Libeskind’s additions are as much an exemplar of twentyfirst century architecture as the power station is twentieth, as thoroughly contemporary as the exhibitions within the CJM. The twin blue angular forms are comprised of 3000 luminous steel panels that interlock in a beautiful tessellation. Their brooding blue colour was achieved through the process of interference coating, and because this process doesn’t use dyes or pigments the colour will never fade or chalk. The panels have a unique cross-hatch surface finish which helps to diffuse and soften the reflection of light off the steel. The cross-hatching give the panels the appearance of changing colour according to the time of day, weather and viewing position, thus creating a dynamic ‘living’ surface. This liveliness, and the chaotic architecture of the exterior of the CJM, reflects the creativity inside. Yet the interior of the CJM is as unusual as the exterior. There are no permanent exhibitions. Two of the three galleries are ‘black boxes’, with no natural light and maximum configuration flexibility for exhibitions. The third gallery has no straight walls, no right angles and 36 windows (twice 18, a significant number in Jewish numerology). Libeskind designed it to be a room whose space was the main feature, a place for meditation, performance or audio installations. This all sounds rather sombre, yet Libeskind clearly has a dry sense of humour. The supporting structures between the galleries are cruciform, a cheeky piece of Christianity in a Jewish museum.

The CJM applies the defibrillators to San Francisco’s arts district in the same way as the power station that it inhabits brought power, modernity and hope in the wake of the devastating 1906 earthquake. It is the penultimate piece in the Yerba Buena civic redevelopment program, a gentrification project in the South of Market (SoMa) area in the heart of the San Franciscan CBD. Yerba Buena is one of the densest museum areas in the United States, with 12 cultural institutions within a 16 block radius. The CJM joins places such as the Yerba Buena Centre for the Arts and the Museum of the African American Disapora in awaiting the completion of the Mexican Museum, at which point the district’s renaissance will be sealed.

Some of the world’s most confronting museum exhibits are in Jewish museums, which leave an indelible memory with those who visit them. At the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, a room filled with the shoes given to concentration camp victims underlines their humanity. The Hall of Names at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem is overwhelming in the number of victims presented. Berlin’s Jewish Museum (another Libeskind project) immerses visitors in an airless, freezing, dark ‘Holocaust tower’. Each of them plays an irreplaceable role, yet reinforces the perception of the Jew as the eternal outsider, the Jew as the cowed other. Critics of the optimistic vision presented by the CJM confuse assimilation with immolation. By seeing beyond the hyphen of the label ‘Jewish-American’ and celebrating the ways in which Jewish sensibilities contribute to the American cultural experience, the Contemporary Jewish Museum exemplifies America’s de facto motto, e pluribus unum. From many, one. +

1 3000 luminous steel panels that interlock in a beautiful tesselation... The cross-hatching give the panels the appearance of changing colour, creating a dynamic ‘living’ surface. 2 The penultimate piece in the Yerba Buena civic redevelopment program... “A vision of Judaism as a kind of freewheeling allegory”. 3 A room whose space is the main feature, a place for meditation, performance or audio installations... The third gallery has no straight walls, no right angles and 36 windows (twice 18, a significant number in Jewish numerology). 4 Its architecture is heavy with symbolism referencing eternal themes... Libeskind’s extensions are in the shape of two Hebrew letters that together form the word ‘chai’, meaning life. 5 “The letters are the life-source and the form of the Museum...” The lights in the lobby spell the word ‘pardes’, which in Hebrew is both a word meaning ‘garden’ and an acronym referring to a mode of Biblical interpretation.

IMAGES courtesy and copyright of Studio Daniel Libeskind, Bitter Bredt Fotografie and Bruce Damonte