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If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?” - Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, known as Maimonides or Rambam
This is an open call to invite professional artists to submit artwork for exhibition consideration at the Philadelphia Museum of Jewish Art located within Congregation Rodeph Shalom from March 16 to July 30, 2026.
Open Call to Artists on The Theme of Democracy
The Philadelphia Museum of Jewish Art (“PMJA”) located in Center City on North Broad Street has a long tradition of art exhibitions. With the reopening of our exhibition programming in 2024, we began with an open call exhibition, which turned out to be an overwhelming success, bringing a new vision for community, artists and attendance to our vibrant urban gallery. Our intention with this open call is to build on this momentum and to invite artists to reflect upon and give expression to the theme of “Democracy: United We Stand” as part of the celebration of the 250th anniversary of our country. Maintaining democracy requires work by all citizens. We invite artists to submit works that visually reflect this concept.
Jurors
A PMJA exhibition committee will be jurying the submissions and will select artworks that respond best to the theme and also work in dialogue as an exhibition. We are pleased to announce that Ruth Fine will again serve as lead curator.
Fine was curator for the National Gallery of Art for four decades. She has organized dozens of exhibitions and written catalogue essays about several printmaking workshops as well as artists including Romare Bearden, Mel Bochner, Wendy Edwards, Helen Frankenthaler, Sam Gilliam, Jasper Johns, Norman Lewis, Roy Lichtenstein, Martin Puryear and Frank Stewart. Fine was awarded the College Art Association Alfred H. Barr Award for Museum Scholarship for the Norman Lewis Catalogue and The Archives of American Art’s Lawrence A. Fleishman Award for Scholarly Excellence in the Field of American Art History, amongst other honors. Fine chairs the board of the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation.
For Artists
The arts invite us to a much-valued place to gain new insights and form new understandings with one another, which is consistent with PMJA’s mission of illuminating Jewish values that embrace openness and inclusivity and establish strong community outreach. In offering a range of interpretations from artists of diverse backgrounds on this timely theme, we intend for the exhibition to become a place for conversation and connections.
Presenting contemporary art that illuminates the complexity, richness and universality of the Jewish experience, the Philadelphia Museum of Jewish Art (PMJA) has, since 1975, presented solo and group exhibitions of work in the broadest range of mediums by artists of diverse backgrounds - age, gender, ethnicity, aesthetic direction. The PMJA is located within Congregation Rodeph Shalom and has many works in their expansive collections on view.
