On Saturday, September 17, 2017, the San Jose Museum of Art paid tribute to longtime supporters of the art collection, Beverly and Peter Lipman, with a video featuring artists Enrique Chagoya and Hung Liu.
During a sold-out evening that raised more than 18% of the Museum’s annual revenue for future exhibitions and arts education, nearly 700 guests attended the San José Museum of Art’s Wonder Ball on September 22, 2018. The gala honorees were none other than benefactors Toby and Barry Fernald and artist Hung Liu, whose contributions to arts and culture in the Bay Area are legendary—a sentiment that was overwhelmingly reinforced by the crowd’s warm praise of the honorees and standing ovations.
During a sold-out evening that raised more than 18% of the Museum’s annual revenue for future exhibitions and arts education, nearly 700 guests attended the San José Museum of Art’s Wonder Ball on September 22, 2018. The gala honorees were none other than benefactors Toby and Barry Fernald and artist Hung Liu, whose contributions to arts and culture in the Bay Area are legendary—a sentiment that was overwhelmingly reinforced by the crowd’s warm praise of the honorees and standing ovations.
Vietnamese Community Outreach Initiative was a two-year-long effort to engage multi-generational audiences with the Art Portal, a mobile art studio, at festivals, shopping malls, and libraries within the Vietnamese community.
The Vietnamese Community Outreach Initiative is supported by a grant from the James Irvine Foundation. Additional support was provided by an Art Works Grant from the National Endowment for the Art.
The story behind the mural "Sophie Holding the World Together" by El Mac, in collaboration with The Propeller Group, featuring 9-year-old Sophie Cruz, who has become a face of the immigration reform movement. The permanent public mural at Discovery Meadow in San Jose was commissioned by the San Jose Museum of Art in collaboration with the Children's Discovery Museum and Empire 7 Studios. Video by Eric Heights.
Jenny E. Sabin’s new architectural forms are inspired by nature and mathematics. "PolyThread" (2015 – 2016) is a temporary pavilion commissioned for Beauty—Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial. This knitted textile structure employs photoluminescent and solar active yarns that absorb, collect, and deliver light. Portable and lightweight, such a structure could be used outdoors to absorb light from the sun during the day and release it at night.
In Artists Including Me, William Wegman playfully rethinks the artistic canon in his collaged paintings (incorporating picture postcards from his massive collection) and in photographs of his dogs (who are practically icons themselves). In this special appearance, Wegman discusses his work, his inspiration, and of course his dogs.
Andy Goldsworthy often works outside, collaborating with nature to create uniquely personal and intense artworks. He created this site specific installation for SJMA’s exhibition Breath of Earth in 1995. This video shows the work being installed for an exhibition in fall 2014—and shows how the changing light and clouds affect the view. The pine sticks used are from a specific area of the Sierra Mountains near Lake Tahoe. If pieces need to be replaced, someone must travel to that same spot to collect more. According to Goldsworthy, "The black of a hole is like the flame of a fire.
On June 19, 2014, the San Jose Museum of Art and San Jose Jazz invited musician John Worley to improvise to the kinetic sculpture "Absolutely" (2012), by artist Alan Rath.
The robotic work modifies its own movements, but does not repeat them. The sculpture moves at-will and "falls asleep" when no one is around.
John improvised on trumpet and flugelhorn. Here's what happened...
Alan Rath, "Absolutely," 2012.
180 x 144 x 144 inches
Pheasant feathers, aluminum, fiberglass and custom electronics.
Alan Rath
Absolutely, 2012
Pheasant feathers, aluminum, fiberglass, and custom electronics
Gift of the Lipman Family Foundation
Alan Rath employs new technologies as a means to explore the uncertain terrain separating humans from machines. Trained as an electrical engineer, Rath infuses his work with an inquisitiveness about electronics that goes back to his childhood. Through his art, Rath celebrates the symbiotic relationship we have with modern technology.
"Now Serving: Love" (February 14, 2014) by Susan O'Malley. Performance from the exhibition "Around the Table: food, creativity, community," at the San Jose Museum of Art, November 9, 2013 - through April 20, 2014
Susan O'Malley brings forth the often overlooked, mundane, and sometimes humorous interaction of everyday life. For her project Now Serving, O'Malley gathered stories from cooks, professional chefs, and good producers about foods reminiscent of childhood bliss, love, healing, and the seasons.
See artist Hung Liu paint the mural Silver River (2013) in this timelapse video. Liu spent a week in May 2013 creating the gallery length painting for the exhibition Questions from the Sky: New Work by Hung Liu at SJMA. A meditation on the fleeting nature of life and death, the work itself is ephemeral by design: it will disappear forever when the exhibition ends on September 29, 2013.
Artist Hung Liu shares her first-ever performance art piece, Four Cantos. Liu performed Four Cantos at the San Jose Museum of Art on June 20, 2013. The finished painting and projection can be seen in the exhibition Questions from the Sky: New Work by Hung Liu at SJMA through September 29, 2013.
Questions from the Sky is sponsored by the Myra Reinhard Family Foundation and Doris and Alan Burgess.
Stephanie is a ceramicist, so she is fascinated by Bean Finneran's Yellow Cone (14,000 Curves). She tells host Dhaya Lakshminarayanan what she thinks and convinces Dhaya not to eat the art.
Visitor Yen-Hsiang tells host Dhaya Lakshminarayanan his thoughts about "Year of the Drowned Dog" by Eric Fischl--and discounts.
Artistic instructions for beanbag chairs? Before she became the new associate director of MACLA (Movimiento de Art y Cultura Latino Americana), Monica Ramirez-Montagut sat down--in beanbags!--with host Dhaya Lakshminarayanan for a chat about Mark Dean Veca's psychedelic mural in "Raging Opulence: Mark Dean Veca."
In the first of our new series hosted by comedian Dhaya Lakshminarayanan, visitor Alicia tells us what she thinks about ArtRage at SJMA and one of her favorite recent exhibitions at SJMA: Leo Villareal.
Eric Fischl sat down at the San Jose Museum of Art to talk about the exhibition "Dive Deep: Eric Fischl and the Process of Painting." Here he discusses his early training and shares thoughts on artists of the Bay Area, the relationship between science and art, and the use of technology in his creative process. See what you think.
Watch SJMA's exhibition team assemble "Yellow Cone (14,000 Curves) by Bean Finneran, in preparation for the new exhibition Local Color. This time lapse shows the crew as they place 14,000 fired clay rods one-by-one over a period of four days.
Explore the power of color in works by artists such as Alexander Calder, Elmer Bischoff, Sam Francis, David Levinthal, and Markus Linnenbrink, and many more. Local Color is on view at the San Jose Museum of Art through January 13, 2013.
"This Kind of Bird Flies Backward: Paintings by Joan Brown" is on view at the San Jose Museum of Art through March 11, 2012.
Noel Neri, son of artist Joan Brown, talks about Brown as a mother and an artist. "This Kind of Bird Flies Backward: Paintings by Joan Brown" is on view at the San Jose Museum of Art through March 11, 2012.
"She walked the walk, but she didn't talk the talk." (Jodi Throckmorton on Joan Brown).
Jodi Throckmorton discusses the connections among Joan Brown's life, her painting, and the women's movement and the inspiration behind the exhibition This Kind of Bird Flies Backward: Paintings by Joan Brown. Throckmorton is associate curator at the San Jose Museum of Art and curator of the exhibition. This Kind of Bird Flies Backward is on view at SJMA through March 11, 2012.
Gordon Baldwin, guest curator and catalogue author of Robert Mapplethorpe: Portraits
From the Creative Minds program "Portraying an Era: Robert Mapplethorpe," at the San Jose Museum of Art, May 19, 2011
See Robert Mapplethorpe: Portraits at the San Jose Museum of Art through June 5, 2011
Photographer Brian English was studio assistant to Robert Mapplethorpe from 1986 until Mapplethorpe's death in 1989.
From the Creative Minds program "Portraying an Era: Robert Mapplethorpe," at the San Jose Museum of Art, May 19, 2011
See Robert Mapplethorpe: Portraits at the San Jose Museum of Art through June 5, 2011
