Magnes opening quartet of new exhibits

There's plenty of hustle and bustle at the Judah L. Magnes Museum these days as the Berkeley-based Jewish institution prepares to open four new art exhibits, three of them on the same day.

The four cover just about every aspect of the Magnes' purview, from classic Judaica to local Jewish history to new work from world-renowned artists.

The exhibits are "Houses and Housings: Portability in Jewish Faith and Culture"; "Case Study: Emanu-El Sisterhood for Personal Service"; "The Danube Express: The Rippling Currents of the River" (all of which open Aug. 29); and "Revisions Larry Abramson: Searching for an Ideal City," which opens Sept. 12.

Magnes chief curator Alla Efimova says the exhibits are "meant to highlight the different aspects of the collections and the programming of the museum. The Western Jewish History Center, the permanent collection of Judaica and fine arts, changing exhibitions that deal with modern art and history, and one meant to connect them."

That last refers to the "Revisions" series in which the Magnes Museum invites contemporary artists to create new work from materials found in the museum's collections. It's a kind of "kid in a candy store" approach to making new art.

For the exhibit, Israeli artist Larry Abramson will create a representation of Jerusalem made entirely of materials on hand: spice boxes, Chanukah lamps, Kiddush cups and other items housed at the Magnes.

"Larry is no stranger to the Bay Area," says Efimova. "He taught at the San Francisco Art Institute and is represented by Gallery Paule Anglim. He immediately thought to build a model of Jerusalem made out of traditional Judaica objects. It's a contrast between this idealized Jerusalem and the city as it is now."

The exhibit on the Emanu-El Sisterhood is drawn from the archives of the Western Jewish History Center. Completely unrelated to San Francisco's Congregation Emanu-El, the sisterhood was a separate agency formed in 1894.

"This was an interesting organization started by women to take care of immigrant populations," says Efimova. "It was a woman-run Jewish philanthropy, one of the first of its sort, and it survived into the 1960s."

On display will be photographs, correspondence, newspaper clips and other materials from the sisterhood's history, some going back 100 years.

"The Danube Express" is an interactive exhibit by Hungarian artist/filmmaker Peter Forgacs based on his 1998 documentary of the same name.

In that film, he told the story of a Hungarian ship captain who made two fateful cruises down the Danube: one in 1939 carrying a boatload of Slovakian Jews fleeing the Nazis; the other, in 1940, an equal number of émigré German farmers leaving Bessarabia (now Ukraine and Moldova) for the "safety" of Germany. The Jews survived and eventually reached Palestine. The fate of the German farmers is unknown.

"Peter turned the film and archival material into an interactive database," says Efimova. "There are five screens, five projectors, music and a terminal where viewers control flow of the narrative of the stories."

"Houses and Housings" is an exhibit of objects drawn entirely from the permanent collection at the Magnes, located at 2911 Russell St., Berkeley. The theme is portability as expressed in Jewish art and text. The exhibit includes paintings, prints, rare books, letters and unusual Judaica, such as a 19th-century German Torah ark drapery and a shivviti (decorated panel) from the Jewish community in 19th-century India.

"We're trying to find new interpretive and display strategies for the traditional ceremonial objects," says Efimova. "Rather than showing them in context of its use, we try to define themes that have more universal significance. So the idea of portability, juxtaposes them with ideas of migration and diaspora."

In addition to the exhibits themselves, the Magnes will host a conversation Sept. 11 with some of the artists, including Abramson and Forgacs.

"People come here expecting something more familiar," Efimova says, "and they end up finding something unexpected."

For more information, (510) 549-6950 or www.magnes.org.