Ongoing
Tending and Dreaming: Stories from the Collection launches the first dedicated collection galleries at the Museum. Providing unprecedented access to core works in San José’s only publicly held art collection, SJMA’s collection galleries position artists as storytellers to imagine the Museum as a space where culture and meaning are actively made and always in process.
This first major exhibition of Pao Houa Her’s photographic practice traces the artist’s deepening exploration of diasporic constructions of homeland among her Hmong American community.
Inspired by the unique ground that underlies the San Francisco Bay Area, known scientifically as young bay mud, this exhibition highlights artists with local ties who are using mud to explore ecological entanglement and belonging in the Bay Area.
Never one to rely on mass produced objects, Calder's rigorous inventiveness is reflected in the unique household items and jewelry that he made throughout his life. Drawing on the Museum collection, this installation highlights the intimate side of the artist through these personal objects, created abundantly and gifted generously to friends and family.
Still in Motion celebrates the unfolding legacy of Alexander Calder through the work of Calder Prize awardees, whose groundbreaking contributions push the limits of sculpture to propel it into the twenty-first century.
Ongoing
Art Learning Lab is a dedicated exhibition space inspired by Sowing Creativity, the Museum’s award-winning STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math) education program. Featuring a diverse selection of work from the permanent collection, the Art Learning Lab reveals how artists engage cross-disciplinary concepts in their approach to art-making.
Ongoing installation
Pae White’s Noisy Blushes (2020) is a meditation on movement and time, light and color, material presence and the elusiveness of form. Commissioned by SJMA, the sculpture soars within the Museum’s thirty-foot high atrium and transforms its entrance into an experiential passageway, delivering a sublime experience for visitors.
Ongoing • Monday through Friday, 8am–5pm*
Offsite at San José City Hall Tower Lobby
Rooted in stories of place, family, journey, identity and—ultimately—home, the exhibition Hidden Heritages: San José’s Vietnamese Legacy focuses on individual voices and personal narratives. The latest installment in the ongoing “Hidden Heritages” series, it tells the story of a community, collective resilience, and the legacy they will leave to future generations who call this city home.
Ongoing installation
Receiver is a phantasmal giant. The figure’s head suggests a robot or alien from a Hollywood movie, its chiseled smile characteristic of Greek statues of the Archaic period.
Ongoing installation
Kelly Akashi's Cultivator is a monumental bronze cast from the artist’s own hand—complete with details of cuticles, fingernails, and creases—as a record of her slowly changing body. Rising from a planter filled with native plants, the hand’s fingers gently support an array of oversized glass-blown flowers modeled after endangered California species, including Presidio clarkia and threadleaf brodiaea.
