Video: Genesis Opening Riverside Church

This video features the preview of the first of three venues of our art exhibition “Genesis: The Beginning of Creativity” – An Interfaith, Intercultural, Three Venue Event in New York City, May-July 2023., in partnership with Caravan Arts.

This venue is the Riverside Church in Manhattan.

Exhibition Dates at Riverside: May 4-June 30. Hours: 9:00-5:00 pm Monday to Friday.

The exhibition will be closed at this site June 2 – 8 for Church events

The exhibition was made possible with additional support from The Louis Finkelstein Institute for Religious and Social Studies at JTS , The Interchurch Center Committee on Ecumenical, Interfaith and Community Concerns, and CANVAS.

The Jewish Art Salon has created a radical cultural conversation, positively unique during the anxiety and dissonance of our current era. This exhibition of 125 artworks is a forceful aesthetic statement about unity, positivity, and hope, by creating a decisive new interfaith/intercultural/ visual art exhibition based on the Creation Narratives. An meaningful communication has emerged between Jewish, Christian, Islamic, and secular artists as they created works of art reflecting these seminal stories of religious world literature. The exhibition is committed to an inclusive discussion examining the narratives and what they mean to the individual artists and their communities at large at this moment in world history.

The other two venues:

THE INTERCHURCH CENTER, 61 Claremont Avenue (between West 119th and 120th Street), New York, NY 10115

Exhibition Dates: May 1- June 30; Monday – Friday 9:00 AM- 5:00 PM.

– Opening Reception: Thursday May 11, 2023;

5 – 7pm – Panel Discussion: 6pm; The Role of the Feminine in the Secular and the Sacred – Exploring Genesis’ complex ideas concerning contemporary women, including new approaches to spirituality and secular themes.

Panelists: Siona Benjamin, Artist; Grace Bydalek, Co-Founder, It is Good: A Festival of Arts + Faith, and Director of the Dissident Project; Afarin Rachmanifar, Artist, Educator; Shilpi Chandra, Independent Curator and Art Historian: Moderator: Yona Verwer, Founding Director Jewish Art Salon, Artist.

RSVP Interchurch May 11: https://Genesis-Interchurch.eventbrite.com ————————————–

THE JEWISH THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, 3080 Broadway, (at W 122nd Street) New York, NY.

Exhibition Dates: June 1- July 30; Monday-Thursday 9:00 AM -5:00 PM.

– Opening Reception, Thursday, June 1, 2023, 5-7pm – Panel Discussion; 6pm: The Art of Creation: A Discussion: The Genesis Narratives seen through the distinct lens of contemporary and progressive Islam, Christianity, and Judaism.

Panelists: Rabbi Burton L. Visotzky, Nathan and Janet Appleman Professor Emeritus of Midrash and Interreligious Studies at Jewish Theological Seminary; Daisy Khan, a Kashmiri-American Islamic campaigner,reformer, and executive director of the Women’s Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equality (WISE); Karenna Gore, American author, lawyer, and climate activist, founder and executive director of the Center for Earth Ethics at Union Theological Seminary: Moderator: Richard McBee, Curator JAS Genesis, artist, writer.

RSVP JTS June 1: https://genesis-jts.eventbrite.com