The highlight of the exhibit for me (and, I expect, for many others) was the small room with the Chagall murals, known as "Chagall's Box," which lined the walls of a small GOSEKT auditorium. The murals were intended to surround the audience with depictions of Yiddish theater, music, dance and literature, as well as images of life in a Jewish village - and were, amazingly, completed by Chagall in only a few weeks.

I could have spent hours looking at these absolutely exquisite Cubist works. One mural in particular, "Love on the Stage," caught my eye at first because it seemed so drab in comparison to the rest of the pieces - it contains little color, and doesn't have the vivid figures that are characteristic of Chagall's paintings. But as I stared up at the mural, things started to appear - an arm, a foot, a piece of lace. The full picture is one of delicate and intense beauty. I won't even put a picture of it here - looking at the mural on a small scale ruins its revelatory effect. You just have to go see it for yourself.

As I walked through the galleries, I found myself wishing that I could have seen these plays taking place - curator Susan Tumarkin Goodman has done a remarkable job bringing the plays to life without the benefit of video or audio, so it's not a comment on the exhibit itself, but more that it whet my appetite for actually seeing these productions.

In particular, I would have loved to have seen GOSET leading actor Solomon Mikhoels in "King Lear." Mikhoels was apparently a triumph in the title role, and the set design (seen in a small model) was very strange and beautiful, with an almost ark-like stage populated by ghostly wooden statues.

"Chagall and the Artists" is a bittersweet exhibit, a reminder of how vibrant the Yiddish theater was - until it was ignominiously destroyed. The sense of impending doom - even as the theater was sponsored by the Russian government and loved by Jews and non-Jews alike - is impossible to shake, but thankfully the exhibit only spends a small amount of time on the death of the theater, preferring to focus on its life.

And at the very end of the exhibit, the sadness of the theater's end is tempered by a small room called "Chagall in the Bay Area," which features more of the artist's gorgeous paintings and drawings, as well as his personal memories of idyllic family life in the shtetl.

I didn't get to hear the audio tour, but it is narrated by Liev Schreiber and features scenes from some of the plays, and I'm sure is worth renting. If you go - and you should - give yourself at least an hour, maybe even two, to explore this phenomenal exhibit. "Chagall and the Artists" will be open until Sept. 7, which gives you more than enough time to see it - at least once!