San José Museum of Art

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Past Exhibitions

Innuendo Non Troppo: The Work of Gregory Barsamian

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Innuendo Non Troppo (innuendo, a subtle implication and non troppo, in music, not too much) included six of Barsamian’s large-scale kinetic sculptures that explore the artist’s complex dream world.

Joseph Beuys: Multiples

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Joseph Beuys Multiples, the largest and most comprehensive museum exhibition in the United States to focus on this body of work, was drawn primarily from the Alfred and Marie Greisinger Collection of multiples, which was acquired by the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, in 1992. Organized by the Walker, the exhibition traveled on a two-year international tour. The San Jose showing was the final stop on the tour and the sole West Coast venue.

The Suburban Seventies: Photographs by Bill Owens

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This exhibition included approximately 80 of Owens’s classic black-and-white and color photographs—a treatise on the suburban sprawl that occurred across America in the 1970s.

Carioca: A Year among the Natives of Rio de Janeiro, Work by Sandow Birk

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Carioca: A Year among the Natives of Rio de Janeiro, Work by Sandow Birk presented a wryly intelligent group of drawings and paintings that record the contemporary landscape and inhabitants of Rio; in so doing, Birk parodied the 19th-century artist-explorers’ pseudoscientific documentation of “exotic locales and their “savage” inhabitants.

Upon a Lilac Sea: Paintings by Catherine McCarthy

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This exhibition marked the first one-person West coast museum exhibition of paintings by Boston-based artist McCarthy. Representing the artist’s most recent body of work, the exhibition included 22 paintings that address themes of beauty, maternity, gender, childhood, and discovery.

Piecing It Together: A Visual Journal

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This exhibition presented works by fourteen contemporary artists—nine from the Bay Area and five from other parts of the United States—who explore their mythologies and histories through personal expression. The participating artists included Pilar Aguero, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Timothy Berry, Carolyn Castano, Susan Marie Dopp, Don Fritz, Lisa Kokin, Holly Lane, John O’Reilly, Lari Pittman, Beverly Rayner, Isis Rodriguez, Shahzia Sikander, and William Wiley.

Girlfriend! The Barbie Sessions by David Levinthal

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Girlfriend! The Barbie Sessions by David Levinthal included 38 large-format Polaroid photographs that explored the many faces of Barbie, from the fun-loving girl on the beach to the cool and glamorous seductress, created by David Levinthal in honor of the toy icon’s 40th birthday.

Cathedra: A Site-Specific Installation by Stephen Galloway

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In this site-specific installation that was located in the Museum's first floor exterior Sculpture Court, San Francisco-based artist Stephen Galloway utilized a large-scale color photograph of a redwood forest. The forest appeared to be located outside the Museum's windows. In reality, once the Museum visitor had passed through the doors to the outside, the harsh reality of the San Jose streetscape and the architecture of the St. Joseph Cathedral was encountered rather than the quietude of the forest. In Galloways own words, "The unexpected is really the meaning of the piece." 

The Permanent Collection: Into the 21st Century

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With a focus on California art made after 1960—and an emphasis on Bay Area art created since 1980—this exhibition comprised approximately 60 works in various media including painting, sculpture, photography, works on paper, and large-scale installations. Among the 50 artists of represented in the exhibition: Barbara Bloom, Joan Brown, Richard Diebenkorn, David Levinthal, Hung Liu, Richard Misrach, Claes Oldenburg, Deborah Oropallo, Alan Rath, Edward Ruscha, and Wayne Thiebaud.

Stripes and Stars: A Visual History of an American Icon

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Stripes and Stars was drawn exclusively from Bay Area collector and internationally recognized graphic designer Kit Hinrich’s extensive American flag memorabilia collection. Navajo tapestries, silk scarves, quilts, sneakers, lapel pins, toys, playing cards and cowboy boots, as well as paintings, prints, and collages were included.

Material Issues: Recent Gifts from the Collection of Katherine and James Gentry

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The Katherine and James Gentry Collection, with 60 works of art by an international roster of 35 artists, was generously donated to the Museum over a three-year period beginning in 1998. This exhibition presented about one-third of the Gentry collection—more than 20 works—by the following artists: Anne Appleby, John Beech, Mary Corse, Tony Delap, Werner Haypeter, James Hayward, James Hyde, Clay Jensen, Martha Keller, John M. Miller, Adrian Schiess, David Simpson, Ted Stamm, Alan Uglow, Gunter Umberg, Elisabeth Vary, and Alan Wayne.