Multiplicity

Multiplicity is an interactive website and sound installation at the CJM being developed by media artists Ken Goldberg and Gil Gershoni. Multiplicity is inspired by the Talmud as both a multi-layered representation of Jewish intellectual diversity and a surprisingly contemporary model for communal conversation in the digital age. The project will take the form of an interactive website—to be launched in Fall 2010—and an immersive, site-specific sound installation—opening at the CJM in March 2011.

Visitors to the Multiplicity website will experience an internet-based installation that solicits and collects viewpoints about Jewish identity. Their responses will be recorded and added to the website, which will evolve with new visitor input.... show more 

Multiplicity is an interactive website and sound installation at the CJM being developed by media artists Ken Goldberg and Gil Gershoni. Multiplicity is inspired by the Talmud as both a multi-layered representation of Jewish intellectual diversity and a surprisingly contemporary model for communal conversation in the digital age. The project will take the form of an interactive website—to be launched in Fall 2010—and an immersive, site-specific sound installation—opening at the CJM in March 2011.

Visitors to the Multiplicity website will experience an internet-based installation that solicits and collects viewpoints about Jewish identity. Their responses will be recorded and added to the website, which will evolve with new visitor input.

While the website can be experienced from anywhere as a stand-alone piece, the centerpiece of the project is the installation at the CJM, which audiences will experience through movement and sound. The installation will be based on voice recordings gathered from the website, offering a physical embodiment of how Jewish social networks can create, comment on, or diverge from a larger community.
 
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Maira Kalman: Various Illuminations (of a Crazy World)

July 01, 2010 - October 26, 2010

Maira Kalman: Various Illuminations (of a Crazy World) is the first museum survey of Maira Kalman’s narrative art. Working as an illustrator, author, and designer, Kalman illuminates contemporary life with a profound sense of joy and a unique sense of humor. Kalman’s art appears everywhere in the foreground of today’s visual culture. She is well known for her covers and drawings for The New Yorker, over a dozen books for children and adults, two celebrated illustrated blogs for The New York Times, and collaborations with leading designers and innovators.

The exhibition features a selection of original works on paper that span 30 years of illustration for publication. Also on view are less widely seen works in photography, embroidery, textiles, and performance. As a context for this survey, Kalman has created a special installation, furnishing the gallery with... show more 

Maira Kalman: Various Illuminations (of a Crazy World) is the first museum survey of Maira Kalman’s narrative art. Working as an illustrator, author, and designer, Kalman illuminates contemporary life with a profound sense of joy and a unique sense of humor. Kalman’s art appears everywhere in the foreground of today’s visual culture. She is well known for her covers and drawings for The New Yorker, over a dozen books for children and adults, two celebrated illustrated blogs for The New York Times, and collaborations with leading designers and innovators.

The exhibition features a selection of original works on paper that span 30 years of illustration for publication. Also on view are less widely seen works in photography, embroidery, textiles, and performance. As a context for this survey, Kalman has created a special installation, furnishing the gallery with chairs, ladders, and “many tables of many things,” drawn from her collections and indicative of how she sees the world both inside and outside the studio.

Kalman speaks of her work as a form of journalism. She uses writing and drawing to render an ongoing account of the world as she sees it. Hers is a daily discipline of creativity based on photography, travel, research, walking, talking, and open observation. A serious love of distraction pervades. Abundant depictions of fashion, food, art, and architecture represent life’s great pleasures. At the same time, rubber bands, pieces of moss, bobby pins, and snacks stake claims for smaller forms of satisfaction.

All of this might seem trivial were it not for the counterweight of history, memory, and loss that is also ever-present. Chaos is another constant, be it crazy and madcap or simply devastating. Indeed, it is her work’s gift to illuminate those things that affirm our own capacity for joy, sadness, humor, charm. In short, Kalman’s art inspires our humanity in light of life’s overwhelming events and details. 
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