On View

Kelly Akashi: Formations

Kelly Akashi is known for her materially hybrid works that are compelling both formally and conceptually. Originally trained in analog photography, the artist is drawn to fluid, impressionable materials and old-world craft techniques, such as glass blowing and casting, candle making, bronze and silicone casting, and rope making. The exhibition encompasses artworks made over the past decade and features a newly commissioned series in which Akashi explores the inherited impact of her family’s imprisonment in a Japanese American incarceration camp during World War II.

A Point Stretched: Views on Time

A Point Stretched highlights artworks in a variety of mediums that stretch, compact, and warp the viewer’s sense of time. Drawn primarily from SJMA’s permanent collection, artworks by Diana Al-Hadid, Chitra Ganesh, David Huffman, Ranu Mukherjee, Maia Cruz Palileo, and others position human existence within broader timescales from long-ago ecologies to distant possible futures. 
 

Evergreen: Art from the Collection

SJMA’s newly dedicated gallery space celebrates the Museum’s collection as both a gift to and a product of its community and provides ongoing access to San José’s only publicly held art collection. Located in the Museum’s historic building, the gallery presents select holdings that highlight the growing collection and the numerous San José stories it tells.  

Brett Weston

Recognized for his bold, abstract compositions of western landscapes and natural forms, Brett Weston was a leading photographer of the early twentieth century. Spanning the 1930s through the 1970s, Brett Weston features fifty-one photographs drawn exclusively from SJMA’s permanent collection that highlight the photographer’s enduring motifs and technical experimentation. 

Sky Hopinka: Seeing and Seen

The artworks of Sky Hopinka, a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation and a descendant of the Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians, traverse the legacies of colonial oppression and Native resistance through meditations on the continuities between past and present. A new film by Hopinka was commissioned as part of Visualizing Abolition, an art initiative of the Institute of the Arts and Sciences at University of California, Santa Cruz and San José Museum of Art. 

Beta Space: Trevor Paglen

Beta Space: Trevor Paglen will feature the artist’s first sound piece, a new public commission titled, There Will Come Soft Rains (2021), installed in SJMA’s historic clocktower and resounding into the streets of downtown San José from 8am–8pm on the hour, as well as sunrise, solar noon, and sunset.

Koret Gallery: Art Learning Lab

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.

Pae White: Noisy Blushes

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.