OJMCHE Opens New Exhibitions Showcasing Two Spectacularly Talented Artists
PORTLAND, OR (September 16, 2025) – On November 9, 2025, the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education (OJMCHE) unveils two new exhibitions that stand in poignant parallel. Without End: Recent Work on Grief by Cara Levine is rooted in the depths of grief and remembrance, and showcases Levine’s unique multimedia practice. Psychedelicatessen: A Powerful Dose of Art by Steve Marcus is soaring with vibrant color, satire, mischief, and rebellion.
OJMCHE’s Executive Director, Rebekah Sobel, frames the juxtaposition of these two exhibitions as a bold conversation that reflects “a trifecta of highlighting Jewish culture, Jewish art, and managing trauma stories” (Oregon ArtsWatch) in one sweeping gesture.
Levine’s evocative griefscape and Marcus’s uplifting Kosher pop art create a layered experience in OJMCHE’s galleries that mirrors the full spectrum of human emotion, from solemn remembering to spirited celebration.
Visitors are invited to journey through these two exhibitions to mourn, reflect, question, dream, and ultimately, to marvel.
TWO NEW EXHIBITIONS AT OJMCHE
Without End: Recent Work on Grief by Cara Levine
Featuring OJMCHE-commissioned, site-specific installations
Celebrated multidisciplinary artist Cara Levine explores themes of absence, empathy, and equity through a practice encompassing studio-based artmaking, social engagement, and curatorial projects. Levine’s art offers profound emotional resonance, inviting visitors into a contemplative space where loss, memory, and healing converge, and the sense of grief becomes tactile and visible. What does a memory look like? How do we touch what is no longer there? Can absence take form? These questions reverberate throughout the exhibition, asking us to consider the shape of a feeling, the weight of remembrance, and the possibility of connection after loss.
As part of this exhibition, she unveils Silverlinings, the inaugural presentation of a participatory, onsite-specific installation right within the museum’s space: an artistic meditation on grief inspired by the Los Angeles wildfires of January 2025, during which Levine lost her childhood home as well as the homes of several other family members. Utilizing sand to represent a boundless sense of the infinite, and a sandbox to contain all types of losses, including climate loss, Levine invites visitors to trace a drawing that represents loss in the sand. The act of kneeling at or bowing towards the sand evokes humility, ritual, and devotion, and offers potential for restoration and catharsis.
Deeply rooted in Jewish ritual, storytelling, and the act of making, Levine’s work explores how the pain of loss permeates our lives, bonding us through shared experience and quiet interconnection. Through sculpture, participatory installations, and communal acts of making, Levine showcases grief as a cyclical, boundless force that ripples through individuals, communities, and landscapes. Her work is simultaneously solitary and collective, intimate and expansive, grounded in personal memory and shaped by global events.
Central to Levine’s process is a ritual of replication informed by her longstanding interest in Jewish mysticism and meditation practice, where the recreation of a form has the power to hold and transform suffering. Visitors are invited to move beyond passive observation and step into the role of collaborator: to pick up a dowel, share a story, and name the weight of loss with their own hands. In this space, grief is not resolved; it is held.
Although based in California, Cara’s ties to Portland include former teaching at Lewis & Clark College, and organizing the city’s first annual Self-Taught Artists Fair with Public Annex in 2017. She is an inaugural Cultural Leadership Fellow with the Mandel Institute for Nonprofit Leadership, with her recognition marking a groundbreaking moment in the fellowship’s history. Learn more at caralevine.com.
Psychedelicatessen: A Powerful Dose of Art
by Steve Marcus
Steve Marcus, affectionately dubbed the “Top Dog of Kosher Pop Art,” brings a vibrant, “psychedelic” visual celebration to the museum. His beloved cartoon universe, created from his home in New York City’s Lower East Side, has been viewed by millions, appearing on five continents in print, fashion, and broadcast media. Marcus’ signature style infuses Jewish cultural motifs with playful comedy and exuberant color.
This new exhibition is “a combination of his psychedelic history, Hasidic knowledge, and essential drollness”(Up Magazine) and revels in humor, spirituality, and communal joy, offering a visual feast that invites laughter, uplift, and the subversive power of pop art. Inspired by a fusion of the psychedelic hippie culture of the 1960s, Judaism, and Jewish Culture, Marcus’ hand-drawn works on paper and handmade objects are colorful and comical flashbacks.
Viewers take a mystical tour on the magic bus down an irreverent, fun, and insightful road that reveals his quirky sense of humor and passion for his own roots and culture. The new project seamlessly marries Marcus’ Jewish spirituality with his past involvement in the counterculture and the cannabis reform movement, putting a modern spin on Jewish subjects and life that form alternative
culture classics for new generations of modern Jews. Turn on, tune in, drop in, and enjoy, laugh, and space out
2 of 4
on Steve Marcus’ kabbalistic Jewish artwork inspired by underground comics, Hasidism, and the psychedelic art
of the free love era.
Marcus shares:
“My artwork has given me the opportunity and privilege to travel the world and I’ve witnessed the world become more and more polarized. Jewish and Holocaust Museums tell and share the important story of the Jewish people’s challenges and persecution in a historical context but as a contemporary Jewish artist I realize that I have a great responsibility. My artwork utilizes pop culture and humor making Jewishness and Judaism relatable to people of all ages, backgrounds, every level of observance and any belief. Through my exhibitions around the world I’ve brought people together in a fun and joyful way that represents a positive and bright future for the Jewish people while also balancing the dark historical narrative.”
Born in the month of August in 1969, also known as the Summer of Love, Steve Marcus takes the viewer out of this world with the artwork he creates in his studio on the Lower East Side, one of New York City’s most important and historic Jewish neighborhoods which was once the stronghold of the Yiddish Theatre, the Fillmore East and other popular and unpopular cultural and religious touchstones. Recognized in the 2015 publication, A Jewish People’s History of the Lower East Side, as one of the Lower East Side’s most illustrious and culturally influential residents, Marcus has developed an international reputation in the art world over the past 36 years.
Steve Marcus (aka smarcus) has received honors and awards from the American Society of Illustrators. He has several works in the permanent collection of the Oakland Museum of California, The Jewish Museum of Florida – FIU, The Yiddish Book Center, The Ludlow Santo-Domingo Poster Collection at the Harvard Library, The International Counterculture Archive at George Washington University, Galicia Jewish Museum, The
Miami-Dade PLS, and private art collections in the United States and abroad. He’s exhibited numerous times at Art Basel in Miami, Florida, The Museum at Eldridge Street in NYC, and The Comics Museum in Krakow, Poland, The Vilna Gaon Museum of Jewish History in Vilnius, Lithuania, The Maine Jewish Museum, The Everhart Museum, The Sherwin Miller Museum of Jewish Art, The Bernard Heller Museum in NYC, The Jerusalem Biennale as well as other prestigious institutions and art galleries. He has created art for and collaborated with Allen Ginsberg, Ken Kesey, Timothy Leary, the Miguel Pinero Estate, The New Orleans Jazz Museum, The Red Hot Chili Peppers and created artwork and illustrations for the United Nations, The New York Times, MTV, High Times, The Cannabis Cup, Guitar World, Tattoo International, The Source, Condé Nast Publications, Esquire and Nickelodeon. You can learn more about Steve Marcus and the art he creates from his Lower East Side studio in Manhattan at smarcus.com.
WHEN
Public Opening on November 9, 2025; exhibitions on view through May 31, 2026
Dedicated Press Hours: November 9, 2 – 4pm with artist remarks beginning at 2:30pm Museum Hours: Wednesday – Sunday: 11am – 4pm
ARTIST TALKS at OJMCHE
- Cara Levine: Sunday, November 9 | 11am – 12pm | included with museum admission
- Steve Marcus: Wednesday, November 12 | 6 – 7:30pm | $5 tickets, free for museum members
ADDITIONAL ARTIST TALKS
- Cara Levine, presented in partnership with PNCA
Monday, November 10 | 6 – 7:30pm | free with RSVP: ojmche.org/calendar
at Pacific Northwest College of Art, 511 Northwest Broadway, Portland, OR 97209
For a complete list of events associated with this exhibit and to reserve tickets, please check the OJMCHE Events Calendar for updates: ojmche.org/calendar
WHERE
Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education – 724 NW Davis Street, Portland, 97209
TICKETS
Adults: $10; Seniors: $6; Students: $5; Members: Free; Children under 12: Free
OJMCHE is free to all on the first Sunday of every month.
Free Admission for: Blue Star Families (active military and their families); Members of the Press; Card-holding members of American Alliance of Museums; Council of American Jewish Museums (CAJM) members; Recipients of SNAP (Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program); Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC); and Caregivers.
ABOUT OJMCHE
The Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education explores the legacy of the Jewish experience in Oregon, teaches the enduring and universal relevance of the Holocaust, and provides opportunities for intercultural conversations. The main and east galleries, on the first floor, feature rotating exhibitions of national and international stature, while four core exhibits anchor programming:
- Discrimination and Resistance, An Oregon Primer
- The Holocaust, An Oregon Perspective
- Oregon Jewish Stories
- Human Rights After the Holocaust
The museum also features a robust series of public programming, including film screenings, lectures, and exhibition-related education, in addition to a beautiful museum shop, all in downtown Portland. Learn more at ojmche.org
For additional information, media materials and interview inquiries, please contact:
Amelia Lukas, Principal, Aligned Artistry; 415-516-4851; amelia@alignedartistry.com