Contemporary Jewish Museum, Museum of Jewish heritage in SoMa, San Francisco, US.
The Contemporary Jewish Museum occupies the former Jessie Street Substation, an 1881 red brick building rebuilt in 1907 by Willis Polk, at 736 Mission Street. Daniel Libeskind gutted the interior and added a tilted, dark blue-black steel cube clad in rectangular panels, with small square windows scattered across its upper faces and a smooth sloped base meeting the ground at an angle. The 2008 addition brought the facility to 63,000 square feet.
The museum was founded in 1984 in a small gallery near San Francisco's waterfront. In 1989 it began planning a larger, central facility, and in June 2008 it opened a 63,000-square-foot building in SoMa. The main structure is the former Pacific Gas & Electric Jessie Street Substation, built in 1881 and rebuilt in 1907 by Willis Polk after the 1906 earthquake; Daniel Libeskind redesigned its interior and added a new wing. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 6, 1974.
The museum's name refers to the diversity of Jewish experience it presents through temporary exhibitions rather than a permanent collection. Its Helen Diller Institute includes a Beit Midrash, a study hall where visiting scholars and staff develop programmes. Exhibitions have ranged from Amy Winehouse: A Family Portrait to Stanley Kubrick: The Exhibition.
The museum stands at 736 Mission Street, at the corner of Yerba Buena Lane in SoMa, a short walk from the Powell Street BART and Muni stations. The entrance is on Mission Street, and the lobby gives onto the galleries of the Libeskind addition. Note that the museum suspended operations at the end of 15 December 2024, so check its status before planning a visit.
The only commissioned object ever kept on permanent display was David Lane's Lamp of the Covenant, a 90-foot, 12,000-pound arc of recycled steel hung above the lobby, studded with globes, animal figurines, Jewish letters and Edison bulbs. Lane, who calls himself an outsider artist, is not Jewish.
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