f0 good morning. and welcome to mosaic. i'm honored to be your host this morning. we're about to start in a wonderful conversation about the contemporary jewish museum and i'd like you to welcome with me lori star, who is the incoming executive director of the contemporary jewish museum. welcome! so lori, you are about to start on this wonderful new position with the contemporary jewish museum. welcome to san francisco and welcome to the museum. tell us where you come from and what was of interest to you in actually saying yes to san francisco and the bay area. >> well, it's a return to san francisco in some respects.

35 years ago, i moved here to be a rockefeller fellow at the fine arts museum of san francisco. it was basically a training in all aspects of museum work but with a special emphasis on museum education and community arts. and that was preceded by graduate work that i completed at university of virginia. i'm originally from new jersey. i completed my fellowship here in san francisco and moved to los angeles. i spent most of my career in museums in the los angeles area. then i was at the university of southern california and i ran the visual arts program. and then i was recruited to work at the getty.

for 15 years, i was the public affairs director, first for the getty museum and then for the getty trust, which is the umbrella organization that manages the getty museum, the getty research institute, the getty conservation institute. so it was my great amazing experience in my career to be part of the team that opened the getty center in 1997 and also work on the getty villa which opened shortly thereafter. >> what a rich career you've had. and you most recently have come from where? >> so i moved with my family. my husband is an artist and we have two sons. we moved to toronto in 2006 after i had been for five years, the senior vice president at the cultural center in l.a. that was my first position in the jewish cultural world.

i was recruited to be a director of an institution in toronto. >> what a fortunate, can we say -- that we all said yes to each other. >> i'm very happy to be back. i think my seven-year sojourn in toronto was very definitive in being ready to take on this position, the main reason being we were able to create out of a very small community center for the arts. what is now canada's only contemporary multicultural multidisciplinary cutting-edge cultural institution. >> i think that most people think of museums as these wonderful places to go to for inspiration, for maybe a sense of spiritual calm, to really

broaden their horizons and in some ways actually build their personal resilience for whatever they might be going through, expand their knowledge base. yet i think a lot of people don't know necessarily the mechanics of a museum. i'm wondering, karen, if you can explain, what's the difference between a curator of a museum and an executive director of a museum, and what as a curator do you do at the museum? >> first i'd like to say thank you and we're just delighted to have lori on board. the whole staff is look forward to working with her. but as you asked about, the difference between an executive director and a curator, the curator serves as a specialist that decides on the exhibitions, decides on the artists, the themes of the show we're going to present, in concert with the executive director. the executive director is our

leader, helping to establish the vision. and the curators are there to help enhance and implement the vision that the director brings. we're going to take a quick break and come back to mosaic in just a moment. ,,,,,,,,

welcome back to mosaic. we're in the middle of a conversation about the function of the museums in the community and both the external aspects

that people see, the inner workings of a museum. why are museums important? >> well, you know, museums came about in a very different time in history. they started out as curiosity cabinets, more or less, for kings and rulers of the world. it was only in more recent times, in the 18th century, that museums started to become places of public engagement. and so you have some of the great museums in the world, like the metropolitan museum of art and so forth, that started to really engage in the public and become more of a place of ideas and dialogue and debate and less of a private, secluded place for only the most privileged to enjoy. and in the last hundred years or so, particularly the last 50

years, museums have enjoyed a fantastic renaissance, not only here in north america but across the world. many museums have been built in the last 50 years of all different kinds. not just museums of western, european art. we always think traditionally of western european art museums. but there are ethnic museums, museums that celebrate cultures from all over the world. museums that -- there's a spine museum. there's all kinds of museums. there's a living museum like williamsburg where people are in costume and actually reenact the past. museums are important because they not only give us a sense of where we come from, what our past is, but it gives us a sense of what our future can be. >> and so, karen, as museums have evolved, then what does a

curator do with any particular exhibit? i imagine it changes, depending on what that exhibit is all about, interactive qualities, the form of the exhibit itself, the art form. so how is the evolution of museum life, if i can use that kind of a phrase, how does it influence the work of a curator? >> very interesting question, because i think things are changing in the world. they are welcoming a much broader audience. what we do as curators, at least in our contemporary jewish museum, is try to create a more dynamic interface between our public, and the artifacts on view. sometimes we do that through ipads, interactive engagements, and as the younger audience comes to museum, with their little iphones and ipads, i think one of our challenges as

curators and museum directors is to still be able to create a dynamic interaction between the historical artifacts, contemporary artwork and make those -- make meaningful experiences for our visitors. i think it's even more a challenge, quite honestly, that we find that the arts are not supported as well in our community, in our education programs. and so i see it as an important role of museums, to help keep that dialogue going about our cultural history, what has gone on in the past, what's going on now and how we look to the future. it's a way for enriching and keeping an ongoing and dynamic appreciation for the arts. >> so our museum here is called the contemporary jewish museum. does that terminology dictate the kinds of exhibits that are brought in as a filter? does it portray a vision no

matter what the exhibit is? how do we understand the word contemporary in front of jewish museum? >> it was a very deliberate choice to name the museum the contemporary jewish museum. the word contemporary being about our time. art that is made more or less in our time, and in realtime, people engaging with art. and to karen's point, i think it's a very interesting dynamic. there's not only been this proliferation of building of museums. the way in which people interact in museums, as you've said, has changed. now that we're in a world of twitter and facebook and other social media and ideas spring to mind and we can instantly share them, we can also challenge and ask questions and not necessarily take for granted or believe exactly the way in which our curators or i

present the works of art. we are all able to make up our own story about works of art and tell their story through our lenses. and that creates a chance for an institution, like the contemporary jewish museum, to be a place of dialogue, to not be a place about frontal knowledge where we stand there and tell everybody what the truth is and share knowledge, but actually to create knowledge together, more communally. >> we have, as it happens, a new director coming to the fine arts museum, a gentleman from new york is coming on board, and here is kind of an iconic institution, both in the san

francisco bay area, but also in the world of jewish museums, as it were, in north america. so i'm wondering if museums have evolved -- if they've become a little bit more porous, a little more interactive, what is there in the context of interaction among the bay area museum culture, so to speak? >> i think our vision for the contemporary jewish museum is to bring to san francisco exhibitions that would never come to the bay area otherwise were it not for our bringing them here. and in that respect, our work complements the work of the fine arts museum in san francisco and in the region. we also have the magnificent collection in berkeley, where the collection itself is an incredibly valuable resource.

so the notion in terms of how we work is to work collectively and collaboratively and to pace our exhibits and schedule in ways that are complementary to one another. there's another example of how we work today. and karen, you can describe that quite well, because it's an exhibition we're about to open soon. we're gonna take a quick break. please join us in just a moment. ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

welcome back to mosaic. we're in the middle of a wonderful conversation with lori starr, the new incoming executive director with the jewish museum, and its curator, karen. karen, what's current at the museum? >> well, we are -- in the next two weeks, we'll be closing a fabulous exhibition.

it closes may 27. it's a small jewel of an exhibition and very interesting. the artist is african-american from southern california that has traveled the world, painting portraits of hip young men. he's been in beijing. and our exhibition focuses on men from israel. it's to be able to raise the profile of young black and brown men from street culture and give them the same presence that he has in the museum. it's very provocative. the paintings are exquisite. we have two fabulous exhibits opening on may 23, an

extraordinary exhibition of photographs entitled beat memories. we're very excited about having the exhibition here, because it's a bit of a homecoming for ginsberg. we're looking here at a portrait of him when he was in new york, when he was about 23 years old, an up-and-coming poet. many people know he subsequently went on to establish his reputation as one of the very important beat poets of the 50's, particularly with his poem of howell. this is his paternal grandmother. the photographs are all personally inscribed at the bottom with allen ginsberg's recollections and descriptions of what was going on at the

time he took the photographers. >> did we cultural as a community know that he was a photographer, or were these really intended as personal expressions that have now come into the public eye? >> that's a very good question, because these actually are very personal, intimate photographs that he took from the 1950's to just before he died, recording intimate moments with his friends. here's a photograph of jack outside of his important, smoking a cigarette, that allen ginsberg took in 1953. and as i mentioned, jack, neil cassidy, many of the critical people that formed the whole beat poetry. this is a shot actually taken on a street in san francisco. and neil cassidy is there with his then-girlfriend. and the marquee is "the wild one." >> when is this exhibit opening and what is its duration?

>> it opens may 23 through september 8. we're very, very excited. we have fabulous programs, public panel discussions, music performances, where we'll be having performers come in and singing some of the poetry by allen ginsberg and other poets. and we also have our ginsberg festival. we'll have a north beach literary tour and two scholars and biographers who know allen ginsberg's work will be speaking in a panel discussion. so it's going to be very exciting, as i say. it was in san francisco where allen ginsberg first wrote and completed howell and performed back in 1955, hanging around with all the beats and all the hip young artists. they'd go have copy there at

black cat in north beach. >> what a wonderful point of history for san francisco and contemporary jewish life. we'll take a quick break and come back here on mosaic. please join us in just a moment. [ male announcer ] the new subway® $4 lunch is for everyone. it's for value seekers. for spicy italian lovers. for veggie eaters. for meatball dreamers. for everyone who wants more of what they love. the new $4 lunch. a 6 inch sub and 21 ounce drink.

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contemporary jewish museum is in collaboration with other art institutions in the community. i know there's a wonderful exhibit that's coming up in collaboration with san francisco's museum of modern art. >> yes. that's the summer show that we're all extraordinarily excited about. it's entitled beyond belief, 100 years of the spiritual and modern art. it's a collaboration. they're collaborating with other institutions in the bay area to share their collections. and we're the first exhibition out of the gate and we're very excited, , because it will be through the lens of judaism. we'll be exhibiting major work. photographs by major figures also. and, again, we're looking at

these works through a spiritual lens. the interesting thing for us is, when you go to the san francisco museum of modern art, often you'll see a traditional western story of art history, talking about surrealism or abstract expressionism or other contemporary art. here we're kind of mixing up the pot and looking at them in a very different way that i think will be provocative and make us realize how artists have actually really looked towards spirituality as a guide for their work, all the way from 1911 to contemporary artists of 2011. >> what are we seeing here? >> this is a work by a bay area artist. it's called orb of power. painted around 1962. it looks like a religious jewish icon. there is a little bit of a funny story to it where while

he painted this image as an award to himself, making a funny jab as being a priest for the high art. now, but i think it really questions, what is the identity of the artist when you are dealing with these religious subjects? >> believe it or not, we only have a couple of minutes left, so we need to start to say good- bye to our audience. >> okay. this is a very lovely, delicate work by paul clay, a well-known artist who did very intimate work. this work is entitled "little angel brings him breakfast." he is known for his images that touch on the intimate side of people and how he saw angels as being an interface between our

heavenly and earthly being. >> karen and lori, believe it or not, we need to come to the end of our time together. just as we say good-bye, lori, just in a moment, can you let us know what attracted you to come to the contemporary jewish museum and say yes to us? >> its expressive jewel of a building. just the architecture alone is something to come and marvel about. its innovation and elegance. it's an old building. it's a station that was renovated and reenvisioned. our five-year anniversary is coming up. it's in a city and a region that is all about innovation and about the future and about imagination. and that's why i'm so happy to

be here. >> lori starr and karen, thank you so much for being with us here on mosaic. have a wonderful day! and check out the contemporary jewish museum. ,,,,,, good morning! wow.

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