An extraordinary cultural moment is unfolding at the Bowery Art Collective in Metuchen, NJ. On December 18, 2025, at 7pm, the Collective will hold a reception for “Open Archways: By the Light of the Same Moon” — a groundbreaking exhibition co-curated by Muslim artist Aakef Khan and Jewish artist Hannah Finkelshteyn.

This exhibition brings young Muslim and Jewish artists together in one shared creative space, not to debate politics but to re-engage with the ancient cultural echoes that bind these communities — shared traditions of poetry, craftsmanship, calligraphy, memory, exile, storytelling, and devotion to the written and visual word.

Rather than simple coexistence, these artists are reviving a historical kinship between Jews and Muslims that stretches from Andalusia to Baghdad, from Ottoman cafes to Brooklyn stoops — a kinship rooted in parallel rituals, languages, migrations, and artistic vocabularies. Open Archways becomes a new version of an old idea: a third space where two communities who once traded stories and musical scales can meet again through art.

The exhibition features 15 emerging Muslim and Jewish artists, including painters, filmmakers, marblers, animators, book artists, and diaspora storytellers. The curators built this show not from submissions alone, but through months of artist gatherings — conversations about family, faith, humor, memory, and shared cultural threads. The result is a rare, deeply human collaboration.

This show speaks to NYC and New Jersey audiences looking for hopeful, culturally rich stories, especially those connected to interfaith dialogue, diaspora identity, Gen Z creativity, and community-based arts.