Cara Levine: To Survive I Need You to Survive explores loss, empathy, and equity through sculpture, video, and socially engaged practices. Grappling with some of the most pressing issues of our time, including police brutality, climate change, and the COVID-19 pandemic, the California-based artist uses her artistic practice as a means to explore and process grief around personal and collective traumas. The resulting works highlight how creative endeavors can facilitate healing and help mourners find meaning in community with one another. Visitors will have the opportunity to reflect on the works on view as well as participate in creating works in real time with the artist, both in the gallery and through public programs. Drawing on Jewish traditions, community practice, and interconnectedness, the exhibition invites visitors to explore installations and sculptural works that plumb the depths of the intimate and universal experiences of grief and regeneration.

This exhibition is included in your general admission ticket. Become a Member to receive free admission. All visitors are required to book their timed tickets online in advance to facilitate a contactless visit to The Museum.

The Contemporary Jewish Museum’s celebrated building, designed by world-renowned architect Daniel Libeskind, has served as an artistic, community, and cultural generator since its opening fifteen years ago. This exhibition delves into the deep symbolism imbued in The CJM’s iconic building. Inspired by the Hebrew phrase l’chaim (“to life”), used most often as a toast to mark moments of togetherness and celebration, the architecture of The CJM’s building embodies the values, traditions, and ideas The Museum explores within its walls. L'Chaim: Celebrating Our Building at 15 explores the multitude of symbols layered in the space we inhabit, unlocking the meaning behind its dynamic energy and allowing all who visit to experience the space anew.

For the last two decades, American artist Gillian Laub has used the camera to investigate how society’s most complex questions are often writ large in our most intimate relationships. Her focus on family, community, and human rights is clear in projects such as Testimony (2007), which explores the lives of terror survivors in the Middle East, and Southern Rites (2015), a decade-long project about racism in the American South.

Throughout her career she has been simultaneously, and privately, documenting the emotional, psychological, and political landscape of her own family—exploring her growing discomfort with the many extravagances that marked their lives. Intense intergenerational bonds have shaped and nurtured Laub, but have also been fraught. Balancing empathy with critical perspective, humor with horror, the closeness of family with the distance of the artist, Laub offers a picture of an American family saga that feels both anguished and hopeful.

As it moves through time, the exhibition becomes a microcosm of a deeply conflicted nation, as the artist and her parents find themselves on opposing sides of a sharp political divide—threatening to fracture the family, and forcing everyone to ask what, in the end, really binds them together. 
In her book Family Matters (Aperture, 2021), her photographs are accompanied by her own words. This exhibition showcases her gifts as a storyteller, with much of the writing presented as immersive sound. Moving through the four sequential “acts” of Family Matters, you will see and hear the artist and her family in their own words: funny, poignant, troubled, and challenging.

Unless otherwise noted, all photographs are digital inkjet prints and courtesy the artist.

The photographs in this exhibition were originally taken in a personal family context and represent the artist’s point of view. Please be advised there are several moments of sensitivity, vulnerability, or family intimacy. We ask that visitors kindly not photograph these particular images, as indicated with a no photography icon accompanying the image label.

Act I: “We Like the Comforts”
I come from a family of very expressive people. Not just in how they talk, but in how they present themselves.
Throughout most of my early life, I found them charming, if a little outrageous—the loudness of their voices and clothing and jewelry matched only by the expansiveness of their feelings.

As I grew up, delight mixed with embarrassment. I felt gratitude for our life, but conflicted by our extravagance, especially as I became aware of its social and economic
context and consequences.

When I became a photographer, my work began to take me outside the bounds of my upbringing. I explored the violence done to Palestinians and Israelis in the midst of their decades-long conflict, and then the persistence of racism and segregation in the American South—confronting the kinds of injustice and suffering that no one in my family faced. It was hard to reconcile those experiences with the uncommon privileges of my everyday life.

I had to get closer to what was making me so uncomfortable. So I started photographing my family and their friends everywhere—at holidays, bar mitzvahs, weddings, poolside barbecues, and vacations. Initially, there were more than a few raised eyebrows. But my subjects soon got used to me and my big camera in their faces or poking around their stage set-like homes and theatrical lives.

As I started documenting their lavish ways of expressing love and their vigorous embrace of life, I wondered how I could have ever felt ashamed of them.

Gillian Laub: Family Matters is organized by the International Center of Photography, New York, and has been made possible through the generous support of Marina and Andrew Lewin, Benrubi Gallery, and, in part, by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Frank Oz is a legendary actor, film director, and performer known widely for being the closest collaborator of Muppet creator Jim Henson. Oz originated and performed many iconic Muppet characters, including Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, and Cookie Monster, as well as Yoda in the Star Wars films. Oz's path to performing, puppetry, and use of humor as a tool for both social critique and social good, was paved by his parents, Isidore (Mike) and Frances Oznowicz.

Before World War II, Mike and Frances were accomplished amateur puppeteers living in Antwerp, Belgium. This exhibition presents the Oznowiczs’ incredible story of courage and resilience as they escaped Nazi-occupied Belgium, resisted Nazi forces in Europe, and eventually settled in Oakland, CA, where they became leaders in the puppetry community. Their journey is presented in Oz is for Oznowicz through a selection of never-before-exhibited marionettes the couple created, as well as archival photographs, reflections from their children, and a first-hand account from Mike narrating part of their harrowing escape for the first and only time.

Most notable among the marionettes that Mike and Frances created is a caricature of Adolf Hitler, which they intended as a tool of mockery and social commentary during the dictator’s rise to power in the late 1930s. In the face of rising antisemitism today, this marionette is a striking reminder of the ongoing need to fight back against bigotry in all its insidious forms. As living memory of the Holocaust fades, it is critical to document and share the stories of victims and survivors in new ways. Taken together, the marionettes and narratives in this exhibition honor Mike and Frances’s incredible refugee story, courageous anti-Nazi undertakings, distinctive talent, and inspiring family legacy.

Content warning
This exhibition contains a marionette of Adolf Hitler that may be disturbing for some viewers.

Our intention in displaying these objects is to bring to light a story of artistic resistance connected to the Holocaust. Through sharing objects and firsthand stories that encourage conversation and contemplation, we hope to further Holocaust education and lessons in fighting antisemitism, hate, and authoritarianism today.