Past Residencies and Projects (2010-2016)

Patricia Eszter Margit founded Art Kibbutz in 2010. Over 600 international Jewish artists joined our network since then. In the beginning we have created minimum budget programs with a big reach, like the Drink’n’Draw with Hassidic New Wave that provided fun, inspiring ways for a large amount of participants to engage in public art performances at Limmud New York.

ArtFest was a week-long program at Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center featuring hands-on art workshops, lectures, programs in 2013.

In 2011 the Shofar FlashMob took place in 17 cities worldwide with the performance of 500+ artists and creative individuals, including NYC, San Francisco, Chicago, Oklahoma, Belarus, and Hungary. Our greeting card reached 60,000+ people on YouTube. We had a month-long online learning experience led by artists (about connecting to the shofar in a deeper level) as well as a workshop at Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center preparing the event. More

Eden Village Environmental Residency, May 2013
Our first pilot residency program took place at Eden Village Upstate New York, where 35 outstanding Jewish artists from 9 countries, ages 23-82, representing many disciplines gave creative responses to contemporary environmental issues from a Jewish perspective and worked with the land. The retreat was followed by an exhibition on Governor's Island a year later. More

New Museum, Mini-Residency, in March 2014, Venice Biennial artist Pawel Althamer invited Art Kibbutz to participate as the only designated Jewish voice to his Draftsmen’s Congress. Twenty international artists explored the fundamental concept of “loving your fellow as yourself”. More

FIGMENT Festival, Mini-Residency, in June 2014, Art Kibbutz brought Jewish art to Governor's Island, one of NYC's hottest art spots and one of the most creative fun events of the summer. By 2013, FIGMENT had grown to a 2-day event, in which over 40,000 participants came to interact and engage with over 400 participatory arts projects. On June 8th 2014, SEPHIRA TRAIL was Art Kibbutz's interactive outdoor art project, related to the Kabbalistic spiritual values called Sefirot and the Four Worlds of Creation. We were invited to address the whole festival at its closing circle...  More

Governor’s Island Artist Residency & Exhibit in August 2014, Art Kibbutz featured an exhibition and hosted five emerging American artists in its residency space. Art Kibbutz transformed a 3-floor historic building, Colonel's Row 407, into a multi-use arts facility for the development and presentation of new Jewish work in the performing and visual arts. Artists-in-residence were offered a retreat-style experience just minutes from the city and audiences gain unique access to New York City’s newest cultural destination. Check out who was there!

Exhibition featuring Jewish Environmental Art Work
Read more about Art Kibbutz's important work and the Jewish environmental art movement at the Forward. Art Kibbutz’s select group of artist gave collaborative and creative Jewish responses to climate change, food security, farming, and sustainable development. They spent a month creating works inspired by nature and our rich heritage at Eden Village in 2013. The exhibition also showed how this revolutionary, unprecedented project, was also a living model of a thriving, inspired, sustainable Jewish artistic community, grounded in social responsibility and the Jewish heritage.   More

Creative Family Circle is our program and community for artistic parents and their kinderlah in New York City. Creative Family Circle is an inclusive, welcoming community that meets on Sunday mornings once a month. Each session has programming for parents, such as artist talks, artist studio visits, hands-on activities, or a discussion, while children engage in “free play” under adult supervision. Children are then invited to join their parents for a creative activity (ex. dancing, drawing, painting, music). Each session concludes with open play and schmoozing. More

Chanukah Special Film Screening and Celebration
On Wednesday, December 17th at the JCC in Manhattan Art Kibbutz featured The Tales of Teleki Square, a Hungarian-French participatory documentary film about the last shtiebel in Hungary. The Teleki Shul has been recently revitalized by Budapest hipsters through communal, art and research projects. Film producers, brothers, and Teleki congregants Andras and Gabor Mayer premiered their film for the first time in the US. Patricia Eszter Margit, founder of Art Kibbutz introduced them and read a short chapter from her bestselling novel, The Jewish Bride that takes place at the shtiebel.

Governor's Island Summer Residency
May - September, 2015
Art Kibbutz hosted 70+ artists at its extraordinary summer of art making, exploration, and networking on Governors Island, New York City - an oasis with waterfront views, and historic architecture; the busy locus for summer arts festivals; and a vibrant hub for artists, and the public alike. On and off-island programming included artists talks, open studio events, Shabbat gatherings, film showings, and more, co-sponsored by Hazon, LabShul, Romemu, Jewish Art Salon, Association for Jewish Theater, UJA, Schusterman Foundation, Chashama, and Residency Unlimited.

A core theme of the 2015 residency was Shmita, the ‘Year of Release,’ known by its biblical roots as the Sabbatical Year. Jewish groups and artists around the world observed this occasion by working collaboratively to foster create a healthier environment, and a more equitable and just society. This work came to fruition on Governors Island in a Shmita Festival on August 9th.

​Rooted: The Ecological Duality of Nature and Jewish Identity Exhibit was on view from October 2015 - January 2016 presented by Art Kibbutz, and co-sponsored by the Jewish Art Salon and Manny Cantor Center, Rooted highlighted the complex and deeply rooted relationships 20 international artists have to the changing natural environment and to Jewish culture. The successful exhibition was part of the ArtCop21's official selection.

Creative Catalyst Symposium
In November 2015 we brought together thinkers and doers of the Jewish social justice and environmental movement with artists, writers, musicians, and curators to explore a new angle on socially engaged art, activism and our changing climate - as part of  the Jewish Social Action Month & the Month of Art and Humanities of the Americans for the Arts at this conference. It was our kick-off event for our new theme: Social Justice. This event was dedicated to the memory of Jackie Brookner. 

Governor's Island Summer Residency 2016
In 2016 - on a shoestring budget, run mainly by volunteers, we produced four months of continuous high quality, publicly accessible programs. We've hosted over 60 juried, multi-disciplinary artists from different streams of life, many different nationalities (including Korea, Cyprus, Belgium, Canada, Israel, Germany, China), age groups, mediums and professional levels. We learned about the most vital social justice issues from experts working in the field and added amazing new partners to our already wonderful group of collaborators including Eshel, Bechol Lashon, We Repair, Footsteps, Jewish Social Justice Roundtable, Women’s Environmental Art Organization, EcoArts Network, ARTCOP21, Americans for the Arts. 

We hosted 16 open studios and leadership & staff retreats of the Jewish Women’s Foundation NY, Hazon, and the JCC in Manhattan’s 20s and 30s team. A dream came true when The New York Times not only mentioned Art Kibbutz in its Arts section, but the New York Times Summer Academy visited one of our open studios. Our select group of artists participated in numerous festivals, including the New York Poetry Society’s Festival, Figment and our very own Creative Queers Picnic. 

This year our hard work also gained recognition beyond the Jewish community, at the highest level of the mainstream art world: we were extremely pleased to receive an invitation to the prestigious Center for Fiction’s emerging writers’ mixer as well as to the Armory Week exhibition. Our team has not only helped artists to connect to their heritage in a meaningful way, but also reached a much broader public through our activities on Governors’ Island and beyond.