In Plain Sight: Jewish Arts and Lives in the Muslim World opens at UC Berkeley’s Magnes this fall

Above image: Lampshade, Egypt or Morocco, ca. 1920. Gift of Dr. Elliot Zaleznik. 76.302.

BERKELEY — Opening August 27, 2024, In Plain Sight: Jewish Arts and Lives in the Muslim World is a new exhibition at the University of California, Berkeley’s Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life showcasing Jewish objects originating from Muslim lands that reflect cultural affinities and common threads.

In Plain Sight shares a selection of artworks and objects from the Magnes’s permanent collection that challenge common views about historical dualities and creative engagement among Muslim and Jewish artists and patrons. The exhibition highlights rootedness in diaspora, shared graphic forms and visual landscapes, attitudes towards sacred texts and human bodies, and networks of trade and knowledge exchange, all centering around the fundamental role of light in Jewish and Muslim prayer spaces. An example is the 1920 lampshade with arboreal, floral, and bird motifs on display. It is inscribed in Hebrew with biblical amuletic texts (after Genesis 9) and in Arabic after the 99 Beautiful Names of Muhammad within the talismanic image of Prophet Muhammad’s sandal.

A collections-based project that began in 2019, In Plain Sight represents more than five years of curatorial collaboration between Magnes Curator and UC Berkeley Professor Dr. Francesco Spagnolo and Dr. Qamar Adamjee, a scholar of Islamic art. With the support of UC Berkeley students and scholars of various disciplines, this work is a central component of the Magnes’s ongoing research into the legacy of Jews in Islamic lands, continuing the museum’s commitment to interpreting Jewish migration and preserving the material culture of Jewish communities around the world.

The echoes of the Jewish-Muslim encounters are, in fact, at the core of today’s Jewish experience. For co-curators Spagnolo and Adamjee, “they speak of human connections across divides, prompt reconsideration of assumptions that shape our public cultural and political debates, and map the precious possibilities—and inherent fragility—of coexistence, mutual appreciation, and belonging to many cultures at once.”

Spagnolo and Adamjee aim at “making the familiar unfamiliar and fresh, at seeing what was unseen, and at engaging viewers in a path of discovery in which the whole is much greater than the sum of its parts.”  

“In Plain Sight, the latest exhibition at the Magnes, opens a needed conversation about diaspora, hospitality, and coexistence. It reflects the best of the Magnes, a combination of scholarly collaboration, curatorial innovation, and object-driven inquiry in order to reveal a narrative that too often has been overlooked. This exhibit shows how turning thoughtfully to the past can help us to imagine ways of living together in the future,” said Sara Guyer, Irving and Jean Stone Dean of the Division of Arts & Humanities at UC Berkeley.

The museum’s co-founders, Seymour and Rebecca Fromer, shaped the Magnes’s collections beyond the scope of European culture and the Ashkenazi world. For more than a millennium, Jewish communities were spread across North Africa, the Eastern Mediterranean, Central Asia, and India. With 19th and early 20th century European colonization transforming the historic economic and cultural links between Jewish and Muslim communities, Jews migrated to Israel, Europe, and North America, including the San Francisco Bay area.

“The Fromers’ vision of preserving the culture of Jewish communities across the globe lies at the heart of the Magnes’s current mission to generate new knowledge and understanding of Jewish cultures,” said Magnes Executive Director Hannah Weisman. “With In Plain Sight, the curators invite us to consider intercultural relationships in new ways through a fresh examination of the art and objects made and used within Jewish communities across the Muslim world.”

On Thursday, September 5, 2024, the Magnes and UC Berkeley’s Division of Arts & Humanities will present a celebratory opening event. The public program will include an introduction to the exhibition and a special conversation between co-curators Qamar Adamjee and Francesco Spagnolo. Learn more about the event and RSVP at magnes.berkeley.edu/in-plain-sight-opening.

Additional programming will be offered throughout the run of the exhibition including a special curatorial workshop for UC Berkeley faculty, students, and staff.

Special thanks to the Walter & Elise Haas Fund, David Berg Foundation, Kenneth Kofman and Andrea King, and an anonymous donor for their generous support of In Plain Sight: Jewish Arts and Lives in the Muslim World.

Dr. Qamar Adamjee, an art historian of the Islamic world and the Indian subcontinent, is the co-curator of In Plain Sight: Jewish Arts and Lives in the Muslim World at the Magnes. Prior to her current position as provenance researcher in The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Asian department, Dr. Adamjee was a provenance researcher for the South Asian collection at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art (2022–2024) and associate curator of South Asian and Islamic art at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco (2009–2020). With a PhD in Art History from the Institute of Fine Arts at NYU, she has taught at UC Berkeley, Rutgers Institute, and NYU.

Dr. Francesco Spagnolo is curator of the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life at the University of California, Berkeley. An associate adjunct professor in the Department of Music and the Center for Jewish Studies, he is also affiliated faculty with the Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion, the Institute for European Studies, and the Center for Middle Eastern Studies. Dr. Spagnolo is a host for the cultural programs of Italian National Radio (RAI) in Rome and a Scholar-in-Residence with the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra (San Francisco). A multidisciplinary scholar focusing on Jewish studies, music, and digital media, Dr. Spagnolo has a PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Museum Hours August 27–December 12, 2024 and January 14–May 16, 2025

Tuesday: 11:00 am – 4:00 pm
Wednesday: 11:00 am – 4:00 pm
Thursday: 11:00 am – 7:00 pm open late
Sunday: 11:00 am – 4:00 pm
Closed Monday, Friday, Saturday, and major holidays

Admission is free.

For more information, please visit: magnes.berkeley.edu/visit.

About the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, UC Berkeley
Located in downtown Berkeley, just steps from campus, the museum and research center is home to one of the world’s preeminent collections of Jewish art and life. The Magnes generates new knowledge and understanding of Jewish cultures with and for its academic and public audiences through its collections-based exhibitions and programs.

Press Contact:
Laura Bratt, Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life
[email protected]

Media Preview: Thursday, September 5, 2024, 1:00 – 2:00 pm. Contact Laura Bratt for more information.