Alum Renny Pritikin, Chief Curator at Contemporary Jewish Museum, Adds Personal Touch

J WEEKLY -- Pritikin earned his Master’s at San Francisco State University. The Contemporary Jewish Musuem had been on his radar long before the museum moved to its current facility on Mission Street. Pritikin says that from the time the museum opened in 1984 (formerly as the Jewish Museum San Francisco), he doubts he missed a single exhibition. “I knew [former CJM executive director Connie Wolf] and always respected her,” he says. “The CJM has been a very feisty, interesting and vigorous institution.” Working with new director Lori Starr, who came aboard in 2013, and the staff has been thrilling, he says. Currently, Pritikin is preparing his first personally curated CJM exhibition, “Bound to Be Held: A Book Show,” which opens March 26. For a museum dedicated to the people of the book, this one’s a natural. “No one can argue about our relationship with books, an accumulated 2,500 years of text and scholarship that is absolutely at the center of Jewish experience,” he says.