Dwelling in a Time of Plagues

 CAJM is proud to report that the CANVAS Jewish arts and culture funding collaborative mobilized Jewish museums, artists, authors, and networks to produce a new season of Dwelling in a Time of Plagues in time for Pesach 2021. This national project was a Jewish creative response to the real-world plagues of our time, drawing on talents across the ecosystem of Jewish arts and culture.

Several organizations in CAJM’s membership displayed new works onsite or online, including the Jewish Museum of Maryland, the Vilna Shul, the Contemporary Jewish Museum, the Jewish Arts Collaborative, Jewish Museum Milwaukee, and the Jewish Museum of Florida. 

These new works — outdoor sculptures, murals, essays, audio pieces, videos, and digital art experiences — reinterpreted the themes of Passover in response to our times. Collectively, they grappled with contemporary plagues, such as the global pandemic, homelessness, institutional racism, xenophobia, ageism, forced isolation, binary thinking, and the climate crisis. Each work was accompanied by a literary response to that plague, based on conversations between the artists and Jewish authors.

The works are all shown online at www.plaguedwelling.com, and are featured in a downloadable PDF designed to spark conversations at seder tables, in communities, and beyond.  For more information, contact executive@cajm.net.

Download and share this companion booklet.

“Dwelling” was a collaboration of Jewish arts and culture networks Reboot, Asylum Arts, LABA, the Council of American Jewish Museums, and the Jewish Book Council. The five were grantees of CANVAS, a Jewish Funders Network-incubated philanthropic collaborative dedicated to elevating the field of Jewish arts and culture.