San José Museum of Art

06/13/2025

💓 Thank you all for coming out for the launch of Vibe House—transforming SJMA into a hub of creativity and community!

✨ Special thanks to host and artists .lyt, , , , .amor.sol, , and .music for sharing their art and light at the Museum.

🗓️ Save the dates for future iterations of Vibe House with Lysn and Friends on the second Thursday of the month. More details coming soon!

06/08/2025

💗 Vibe House is a movement that celebrates artistic expression and community spirit. 💗

🎤 You’re invited to Vibe House, an evening of music and live performances hosted by . Mix and mingle with creatives from all fields. Vibe House features a showcase of artists .lyt, , , , .amor.sol, , and .music.

🗓️ Thursday, June 12, 6–8pm
📍 at
🎟️ Free with Museum admission
🔗 Details at sjmusart.org/VIBE

06/06/2025

📈 What are the connections between clay and data?

🎺 In "Soil Horizons" (2022) a video installation by Futurefarmers, the video cpatures a performance and interaction between clay and data, created collaboratively with San José State University's Spartan Marching Band.

🗻 Opening July 11 at SJMA, "Young Bay Mud" highlights artists with local ties who are using mud to explore ecological entanglement and belonging in the Bay Area. These artists invoke indigenous, ancestral, sensorial, and multispecies knowledge to propose alternative ways of relating to our immediate environment.



Images: Futurefarmers, "Soil Horizons," 2022. Video and sound, dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artists and the Natalie and James Thompson Art Gallery, San José Museum of Art.

06/02/2025

As a long-time supporter of the local arts, we'd like to share our appreciation for the San José Museum of Art and Institute of Contemporary Art San Jose. Thank you for the work you do to enhance art education and social awareness in our community.

06/02/2025

Thank you for highlighting First Fridays at SJMA DoTheBay!

Join us June 6 for First Friday featuring Phoebe C, free admission starting at 6pm!

What's not to love about museums? You learn new things. You see interesting art. You can use them as a neutral location to figure out whether or not your Tinder date is a total creep. But getting in the door can get pricey, which is why free days are a tot

06/02/2025

Rising percussionist returns SJMA's First Fridays to perform jazz reimaginings of fan favorite anime and video game soundtracks, joined by on bass and on keyboard. Presented in partnership with

Everyone can enjoy an evening of open galleries and music at SJMA’s First Fridays. The Museum Store is also open late, and stop by by for light bites and refreshments.

San José Museum of Art First Fridays are made possible in part by major support from the Jay Paul Company.

05/31/2025

Thank you, Sarah Hotchkiss, for including "Pao Houa Her: The Imaginative Landscape" in KQED Arts's summer guide for must-see museum and gallery shows!

Opens July 11, "The Imaginative Landscape" is the first major exhibition of Pao Houa Her’s photographic practice, tracing the artist’s deepening exploration of diasporic constructions of homeland among her Hmong American community.

Read the article with the link below.

A 23-hour video, a plaza picnic and a 4th of July ‘Media Burn’ all come the Bay Area this summer.

05/29/2025

SJMA announces the appointment of two members of its senior leadership team to serve as interim Executive Co-Directors: Karen Rapp, deputy director, and Lauren Schell Dickens, chief curator!

Rapp and Dickens will lead SJMA beginning June 1, 2025, as it undertakes a national search for a new executive director following the departure of S. Sayre Batton, Oshman Executive Director. Rapp and Dickens will work together to oversee daily operations, continue to advance the Museum’s mission, and support staff and programming through this period of transition.

Learn more about the interim co-directors at sjmusart.org/press-releases.

Image: Karen Rapp and Lauren Schell Dickens, Interim Executive Co-Directors of San José Museum of Art. Photos by Gary Sexton Photography.

05/28/2025

“With all the artworks, I feel like the whole process changes everything that I know and everything that I think about. And why else would I do this? Because nobody wants you to do it.” — Patty Chang

Last days to see "Beta Space: Patty Chang and David Kelley," featuring the premiere of "Stray Dog Hydrophobia," a multimedia exploration of the dynamic entanglements between humans, animals, minerals, and machines. On view through Sunday, June 1.

Quotes: Patty Chang interviewed by Catherine Wagley for "LA Times," "Being in L.A. can make you environmentally anxious. Patty Chang decided ‘to do something about it," June 24, 2023. https://www.latimes.com/lifestyle/image/story/2024-06-24/la-artist-patty-chang-on-environment-and-motherhood

Images: Installation view of "Beta Space: Patty Chang and David Kelley" at San José Museum of Art, November 1, 2024–June 1, 2025. Photo by Glen Cheriton.

05/24/2025

"Wandering through the gallery is a submersive experience. The outer space painted from Olujimi's dream life resembles an ocean, or oceanic states of mind, as much as it does a map of his internal cosmos." — Jeffrey Edalatpour

Thank you, Jeffrey Edalatpour, for writing a feature on "Kambui Olujimi: North Star" for Metro Silicon Valley! Read the full article below.

Only a few more days to see "North Star!" See the exhibition before it closes on Sunday, June 1.

Kambui Olujimi’s show at the San Jose Museum of Art evokes a recurring dream in which he runs faster and faster, nearing the speed of light.

05/22/2025

Today we celebrate the life and legacy of human rights activist and first openly gay official in California, Harvey Milk—who believed that government should ensure equality for all citizens.

Image:
Robert Arneson, Five Times for Harvey (detail), 1982. Mixed media on paper
Each 30 x 24 inches. San Jos Museum of Art, Gift of J. Michael Bewley. © Estate of Robert Arneson, 2018, licensed by VAGA, New York; Photo by Douglas Sandberg.