Pack your bags, don your best resort wear, and venture to a Catskills oasis! With food, drinks, music, and dancing, come celebrate inherited and imagined memories of Jewish resorts in the new exhibition Away in the Catskills: Summers, Sour Cream, and Dirty Dancing by Marisa J. Futernick—which features a series of fifteen prints capturing the pleasure and freedom that families like Futernick’s experienced in the Catskills. 

Plus, explore the current exhibitions Jack Kirby: Heroes and Humanity and Diane von Furstenberg: Woman Before Fashion.

This fun-filled event also features:

• Dina's Dumpling and WAFL Truck food trucks
• An outdoor screening of the classic movie Dirty Dancing (1987)
• Drag bingo led by Miss Barbie-Q
• Twist dance lessons by BODYTRAFFIC
• Artist talks with Marisa J. Futernick (6:30 pm and 7:30 pm)
• Borscht Belt–style comedy by Eli Leonard
• Shuffleboard courts
• Superhero tattoos by WeAdornYouLA (Jack Kirby-related)

Miss Barbie-Q is a trailblazing drag artist, activist, and community leader with over twenty-five years of experience captivating audiences across the globe. Known for her fierce wit, powerhouse performances, and unwavering commitment to uplifting marginalized communities, she brings heart, humor, and high heels to every stage she steps on. Offstage, Sydney Rogers, MSW, is a respected program manager, commissioner, writer, and advocate for Trans economic empowerment. With a voice rooted in lived experience and liberation work, she bridges artistry and activism with love, strategy, and rhinestones. Whether she’s calling bingo numbers or calling in justice, Miss Barbie-Q always shows up ready to shine.

BODYTRAFFIC uses the creative spirit of its Los Angeles home as a backdrop for delivering performances that inspire audiences around the globe to simply love dance. Since its founding in 2007 by Artistic Director Tina Finkelman Berkett, the company has held fast to its mission of championing contemporary dance, educating audiences, and inciting positive change. Its goal is simple: get the world moving. Movement, conceptual and physical, is humankind’s only common language, and as a twenty-first-century dance company, BODYTRAFFIC is honored to share the responsibility of making dance accessible to everyone, regardless of their circumstances, within the national and international cultural ecosystem.

Marisa J. Futernick (b. 1980) is an LA-based interdisciplinary artist and writer who uses photography, text, painting, radio, and video installation to examine the less visible social and political histories of the United States.  

Her recent solo exhibitions include Concession at Murray State University in Murray, Kentucky (2025); Dirty Dancing: Revisiting the Catskills at Brandeis University, Boston (2023); and Popular Vote at Glendale Community College, Los Angeles (2022). Futernick’s work has been presented at numerous institutions including the Whitechapel Gallery, London; Royal Academy of Arts, London; ICA, London; The British Library, London; Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art, University of Nevada, Las Vegas; Harvard University; and Yale University.  

She has published several artist’s books, including 13 Presidents (Slimvolume, 2016), How I Taught Umberto Eco to Love the Bomb (RA Editions and California Fever Press, 2015), and The Watergate Complex (Rice + Toye, 2015). 

Futernick holds a BA from Yale University and an MFA from the Royal Academy Schools, London, with additional studies at Goldsmiths College, London. She was born in Detroit, Michigan and raised in Hartford, Connecticut. After fifteen years in London, Futernick now lives in Los Angeles where she is a core member of the activist group Artists 4 Democracy.

Eli Leonard is a Jewish comedian who wrote storylines for and appeared on HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm. He is a regular at The Laugh Factory and consistent opener for major touring acts such as Elon Gold. His hilarious and poignant one-man show, Good Showbiz, has held a residency at The Elysian Theater in Los Angeles since 2023, and has gone on to sell out theaters in Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago, Minneapolis, and Ann Arbor. An alumni of the UCB Theatre and Philippe Gaulier’s renowned clown school, Eli can be seen starring in several popular sketches on the Jeremy Garelick produced American High Shorts Instagram page with over 500k followers and millions of daily viewers. Most recently he can be seen in the feature film Edge of Everything which premiered at the 2023 Munich International Film Festival and won Best Film at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival.