Featuring works by artists such as Wayne Thiebaud, Roy DeForest, David Hockney, Vija Celmins, Ed Ruscha, Frank Stella, Louise Nevelson, and Richard Diebenkorn, De-Natured presented a sampling of the many ways that artists have engaged with their changing environments. At a time when we are increasingly “growing up denatured,” as one New York Times writer recently described the divide between urban and pastoral life, these artistic collisions with nature (or its absence) have much to tell us about our own relationships with the environment, both natural and urban.

The American painter and printmaker Richard Diebenkorn is regarded as one of the leading artists of the twentieth-century due to his significant contributions to Abstract Expressionism, Bay Area Figuration, and his highly acclaimed Ocean Park series. Diebenkorn in New Mexico: 1950 – 1952 is the first exhibition devoted entirely to the artist’s New Mexico work. In 1950, Diebenkorn enrolled in the Masters of Fine Arts program at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, leaving behind a teaching position at the California School of Fine Arts (now known as the San Francisco Arts Institute). Over a two-year period, Diebenkorn created a body of work that represented the region’s desert terrain through aerial views, linear planes, and a palette of rusty earth tones. His unique rendition of landscapes continued in his later works, including the Berkeley and Ocean Park series. Highlighting a little-known period of Diebenkorn’s work that had a lasting impact on his career, the exhibition brings together 50 paintings, works on paper, and sculpture that have never been seen together before. Diebenkorn in New Mexico: 1950-1952 is organized by the Harwood Museum of Art, Taos, University of New Mexico with major support from the Thaw Charitable Trust and the Richard Diebenkorn Estate.

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Ruscha and Pettibon explore the tensions, congruencies, and associations of image and text. This exhibition represents their collaborative work on the two print series The Holy Bible and THE END. The exhibition included several states of the two collaborations—including all 27 color trial proofs of THE END with unique texts by Pettibon on each, and related artworks by both Ruscha and Pettibon.

Ramírez (1895–1963) created some 300 artworks of remarkable visual clarity and expressive power within the confines of DeWitt State Hospital, in Auburn, California, where he resided for the last fifteen years of his life. 

This exhibition featured approximately 50 works of art and 30 items of ephemera dating from 1951 to 1994, including collages, paintings, and sculptures, by Jess (1923–2004), a San Francisco–based visual artist who emerged from within the literary context of the Berkeley Renaissance and San Francisco’s Beat culture.

Bursting with expressive energy, Il Lee's drawings and paintings produce the maximum impact with minimal materials. Using the unique medium he has cultivated since the 1980s—the humble ballpoint pen on paper, and more recently, canvas—Lee creates works that are abstract, yet express the dynamic, unbridled power of nature. Born in Seoul, Korea and educated at the prestigious Hong-Ik University in Seoul, Lee earned his MFA in painting from the Pratt Institute in New York. This is the Brooklyn-based artist's first major museum survey exhibition, and spans the past 25 years of his work.

The best art collections reveal an intriguing and singular vision. Assembling a dazzling variety of drawings by celebrated architects, artists, and designers, L.J. Cella has carved out a unique collecting niche, ranging from Robert Irwin's meticulous presentation drawings on vellum to Frank Gehry's spontaneous brainstorms on paper napkins. These drawings and photographs offer a pathway into the creative mind, revealing the thought processes and varied impulses behind contemporary architectural and landscape design projects, both real and imagined.

This exhibition explored the graphic art of Maurits Cornelius (M. C.) Escher (1898-1972), the 20th-century Dutch master recognized as a predecessor of op art. A cross section of the artist’s works, including several of his lesser known early works and original preparatory drawings, were featured. The Portland Art Museum was the organizing institution.

New Year, New Gifts displayed a selection of gifts to the museum’s permanent collection received over the past two years—many on display for the first time. Between 2001 and the opening of this exhibition, the San Jose Museum of Art added 377 new paintings, sculptures, works on paper and technology-based works to the collection.

This exhibition featured a flock of Pepe Ozan’s colorful and fanciful Monicacos, 10 new sculptures ranging from 4 to 14 feet in size, created especially for SJMA.

Family Legacies was the first exhibition to examine the artwork of the talented Saar family: Betye Saar and her daughters Lezley and Alison Saar. The exhibition featured nearly 50 artworks, including mixed-media sculptures, assemblages, collages, and a collaborative installation created by the three artists.

Hundreds of families—taking any number of forms as only the diversity of the Bay Area can provide—were invited to participate in SJMA’s first-ever non-juried community exhibition. We Are Family was conceived as a companion exhibition to Family Legacies: The Art of Betye, Lezley, and Alison Saar, featuring the work of one of the most renowned artist families in the United States—Betye Saar and her daughters, Lezley and Alison.

Imagine a photographic image of the great outdoors—yet, upon closer examination the scene turns out to be a minute reproduction, painstakingly constructed from unorthodox materials. Working in this vein, the artists in this exhibition transform the diminutive into lifelike environments that blend the real and the imagined.

Suburban Escape: The Art of California Sprawl is the first comprehensive look at a unique genre of suburban art created in California since 1950. The exhibition will survey the work of approximately thirty artists who have devoted a significant portion of their careers to the examination of suburban culture—including suburban development, tract home architecture, home construction, and land use in California. The interdisciplinary scope of the project—spanning the fields of art history, architecture, history, geography, environmental studies, suburban studies, and urban planning —assures broad appeal among both scholars and the general public. Some of the artists in the exhibition include: Lewis Baltz, Jeff Brouws, Angela Buenning, Darlene Campbell, Fandra Chang, Stéphane Couturier, William Garnett, Jeff Gillette, Todd Hido, Salomon Huerta, Robert Isaacs, Bill Owens, John Register, Mary Snowden, Joel Sternfeld, and Larry Sultan.

Steinkamp, a Los Angeles–based installation artist, works with 3-D animation in order to explore ideas about architectural space, motion, and phenomenological perception. This exhibition offered a comprehensive view of this important artist’s work from 1993 to 2006. The lead sponsor for this exhibition was NEC; major sponsors included Deutsche Bank Private Wealth Management, Myra Reinhard Family Foundation, and Lehmann Maupin, New York. Additional Support was provided by ACME, Los Angeles; Byrne Family Trust; Carla and Fred C. Sands; James Irvine Foundation; LEF Foundation; and Theres and Dennis Rohan.

Inspired by Japanese anime, Kathy Aoki creates an alternate universe populated by female construction workers and teddy bears. These perky cartoon characters, with oversize heads and large round eyes, are at a worksite filled with familiar equipment ornamented in unfamiliar ways. Trucks and cranes roll by emblazoned with flowers and hearts and colored bubblegum pink or baby blue. Through the uncommon combination of cuteness and construction Aoki explores gender stereotypes and their related expectations.

At first glance, Ingo Günther’s glowing globes exude an aura of times past; evoking libraries from the Age of Enlightenment when such globes were on the front lines of scientific discovery. A closer look reveals that Günther has overlaid his globes with current geo-social and scientific data collected from institutions, governments, and media sources around the world, raising issues of globalization as neutrally as possible.

The installation Listening Post by Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin analyzes all the text—typed just moments before—by tens of thousands of people in Internet chat rooms around the world. It presents them as six different “movements,” combining musical tones, sound effects, synthesized voice, and scrolling text.

Edge Conditions featured the work of over a dozen artists whose digital art is among the most exciting and challenging contemporary art being created today. Part I: The initial installation consisted of two works: Listening Post by Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin and Ingo Gunther’s World Processor.

This exhibition featured a selection of Rivera’s abstract paintings. Inspired by the landscape of his native Mexico and the bright colors of pre-Columbian and Mexican arts and crafts, Ramos Rivera has a great love for his materials, which he manipulates with a sense of ritual and rhythm.

The San Jose Museum of Art would like to thank the Koret Foundation for its support of this exhibition.