NUMU adopts innovative approach to exploring town history through art, artifacts and spotlight exhibits.
Andrea Borsuk, Radiant Light: the Story of Eastfield Ming Quong, mural detail, 2017
The Los Gatos History Gallery is an interactive exhibit space dedicated to history featuring mural paintings by Bay Area artist Andrea Borsuk. The program goal is to inspire and empower people to make Los Gatos’ richly diverse past a meaningful part of their contemporary lives.
In addition to the murals, the gallery includes objects and ephemera from the NUMU collection and an engaging interactive for public participation.
During the first phase of the history gallery’s evolution that began in 2016, Borsuk created a series of community specific landscape murals that chart a course through the Santa Cruz Mountains to Los Gatos and explore the characteristics of the town. The second phase of the gallery was realized in a series of murals that provide the story backdrop for the Ming Quong Orphanage for Chinese girls founded in the 1930s in Los Gatos that exists today as Uplift Family Services. Radiant Light: The Story of Eastfield Ming Quong, was exhibited in NUMU's Mike and Alyce Parsons Reception in 2016
Borsuk created additional murals on themes selected by NUMU’s History Curator. The murals are augmented and layered with objects from the museum’s collection to tell significant stories of the people, places and events that have historically shaped the town of Los Gatos. Themes to be highlighted include:
Origins and Beginnings
Creativity and Inspiration
Innovation
Industry: Harvesting Agriculture to Harvesting Ideas
Community
The Los Gatos History Gallery highlights and celebrates NUMU’s distinctive role as an art and history museum by incorporating both disciplines. The murals will lead the visitor through time and place, and their flexibility to be reinterpreted make them an ideal and versatile tool for teaching many aspects of history. Topics and stories will rotate to provide new information and experiences for all museum audiences.
Major support for the Los Gatos History Gallery is provided by McManis Faulkner.
Additional support is provided by The Farrington Foundation, The Los Gatos Community Foundation, EMQ Guild (Happy Dragon Thrift Shop), EMQ Auxiliary (Butter Paddle Gift Shop), and Maggie Leach.
More information on this exhibit may be found on our website through the Press Resources Page. Read press coverage for the exhibit on the NUMU in the News page. You may also sign-up to receive our Press Releases Here.
