New Museum Los Gatos (NUMU) presents an exhibition of five women artists who explore concepts of memory as it pertains to generational and cultural experience, immigration and migration. Through various media, they explore their experience of inherited memories and unveil personal stories of family and heritage while inviting us all to consider the deeper themes that connect us with the past, and with each other. Engaging with culturally significant materials and symbolism, these works examine the vicarious nature of memory, and present implicit meanings carried in ancestral artifacts that are passed from one generation to the next. Each artist meaningfully conveys the idea that we are all shaped not only by our personal experiences, but by those of past generations.

Holly Lane—In the Artist’s Studio offers a rare opportunity for access into Lane’s meticulous step-by-step artistic process. Hiking photographs, along with sketchbooks, design layouts, color trials, preparatory diagrams, drawings, and paintings, plus painting and woodworking tools, and works in process will provide invaluable insight into the studio of a contemporary artist whose methods are more closely aligned with a Medieval-era artisan’s workshop.

Holly Lane—Not Enough Time to Love the World, showcases a range of Lane’s work garnered from the previous ten-plus years of a multi-decade career. As an art undergraduate, she began considering the relationship of frame to picture. She has since reimagined it into a new art form of her own invention, in which each component—painting and frame—is fundamental to the work as a whole.

In partnership with genARTS Silicon Valley, we are proud to announce the 4th Annual Experimental Exhibition, on view at NUMU from Fri, July 19 through Sun, October 6. In this juried show, artists from across Santa Clara County were invited to create a work of art exploring the Boundaries in their world

Each year the Executive Director, in partnership with the Curatorial Team, commissions a Bay Area artist to create a limited edition series of works as part of the Director’s Circle Program. The artist chosen to participate in this annual program also donates two pieces from the commission to the museum: one which stays in the Permanent Collection, the other is used for fundraising. In this way, the Director’s Circle program not only supports personal collecting, but also helps to build NUMU’s Permanent Art Collection. See past works in this retrospective exhibition and the reveal of this year’s work by artist Kiana Honarmand in an upcoming event (details coming soon)!

In partnership with Local Color, we’ve invited muralist Tomas ‘Wisper’ Talamantes into the museum for a dynamic look into his creative process. Wisper will create an original mural at the museum, exploring the untold stories, people, events, and variety of cultures that have contributed to Los Gatos and its surrounding areas. During three live sessions, visitors will enjoy the special opportunity to see Wisper in action and learn about his creative process and philosophy. Alongside the developing mural, visitors can see photographs of the artist’s past work, Freedom, as documented by photographer Buggsy Malone

A solo show featuring artist Liz Harvey.

the lost ones: iterations and murmurs is an exhibition centered on the artworks, artifacts, and ephemera behind creating the lost ones, a multi-year performance project by Bay Area artist Liz Harvey. For the lost ones performance project, Harvey worked with a range of collaborators, including choreographers Mary Armentrout, Cherie Hill, and Megan Nicely, as well as, science editor Lauren Muscatine. The project featured myriad performers rotating through an embroidered performance garment on which participants were invited to stitch images of endangered plants in order to highlight overlooked species, untold feminist histories, and little-acknowledged art practices.

The Greater Bay Area Open (GBAO) is a juried fine-art-only competition and exhibition presented by the Los Gatos Art Association (LGAA), designed to promote fine art and artists from the greater Bay Area. Starting in 2015 and held biannually, the GBAO is now in its fifth showing and is presented biennially. This exhibition forges an exciting and dynamic association between the LGAA and NUMU, host to this collaboration.

Spanning twelve Bay Area counties, from Sonoma to Monterey, this juried event draws artists to compete for awards and recognition but also brings exposure to respected jurors, galleries, and art collectors from the region. The GBAO embraces artistic excellence, accepting both two-dimensional and three-dimensional fine art into a premier venue.

In every moment of creativity, there is an option to explore one’s perspective and expression. For this exhibition, LGAA invites artists to push work past usual boundaries to embrace the movement between potentiality and actuality. All artists are encouraged to interpret the theme, “Potentiality / Actuality” in their own way.

A solo show featuring artist Linda Simmel.

Through evocative drawings, etchings, and paintings, Linda Simmel explores personal and cultural connections between landscape, memory, and history. The Hiking Club: A Vocabulary of Yearning intertwines the story of being the daughter of an immigrant, with the sublime in nature. The works in the show are in part homage to landscape, trees, and the histories they’ve lived in, as well as Simmel’s immigrant father and the time in which he lived. For the artist, the work reveals the process of unraveling the burden of history that defines her, which ultimately presents a sensitive inquiry into intergenerational cultural identity, loss, and renewal.

As individuals, we tend to move through life as if we are the main character; going about our days with ourselves at the front of our minds. We know ourselves best. But what happens when we take a moment to pause and listen to our neighbor? How can someone else’s story help us unpack our own? Turning our stories into collective experiences and feelings allows us to heal both individually and as a community. The familiarity we know in ourselves is found in others, each of us working through unfamiliar transitions and moving beyond our comfort zones. Each of us is working to become more connected—familiar with the unfamiliar.

On view May 5 through Nov 12, 2023, In the Artists’ Studio: Featuring RREVV Studio will introduce visitors to the artists behind the Santa Cruz-based design studio, Rachel and Rigel Hunter. Dive into their shared creative process to develop and execute new works by following along with a piece of unique wearable artwork as it goes from concept to raw material, to a collectible object. RREVV Studio will discuss negotiating the tensions inherent in working between the realms of art and design, as well as the pressures that come with being practicing artists who manage businesses to support their work.

NUMU is collaborating with the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe, San Jose State University, and Mosaic America on this art exhibition, featuring photography of their aboriginal ancestral homeland by Tribal Photographer Kike Arnal. Visitors to the exhibit can also explore with the Mosaic Atlas Cultural Mapping Project, an interactive map highlighting places of significance to local indigenous peoples and other regional cultural groups.

NUMU is collaborating with the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe and San Jose State University on this art exhibition about the vitality of the Muwekma, featuring photography of tribal members by their Tribal Photographer Kike Arnal. The project will promote deeper understanding of local indigenous art, culture, history, and contemporary issues in Los Gatos and the greater Bay Area, and preserve and share knowledge about critical issues of federal recognition that the Muwekma Ohlone continue to fight for.

Opening October 2022, NUMU is pleased to present Terra Firma, a group art exhibition guest curated by Marianne K. McGrath. Artists will explore our relationship with the land and present unique interpretations of meaning and connection through diverse media, including drawing, painting, printmaking, photography, sculpture, video, and sound.

Kathy Aoki creates a faux-museum exhibit depicting a fictional character who collects and destroys artwork by Jeff Koons. The immersive satirical tableau, with a mesmeric diorama and new works on paper, brings the viewer in on the joke that reveals the hypocrisy and patriarchy of the art world, represented by Koon’s enormous financial success as a male artist who focuses on the banal.

Aoki uses humor to explore gender and beauty issues through mock historical artifacts and documentation. Leveraging the exaggerated authority of institutional settings, à la institutional critique artist Andrea Fraser, she includes wry, museum-style labeling to present the work.

In her series Marie Cameron | Critical Masses, A Very Low Tide (June 17—Oct 23), Los Gatos artist Marie Cameron presents views of human impact on our delicate ecosystem, with a series of 9 pieces that explode with color, dense pattern, and familiar objects colliding with natural elements. For this exhibition Cameron adds 3 new pieces to the growing series that reminds the viewer of the fragile, causal relationships that affect the fate of our shared ecosystems.

New Museum Los Gatos endeavors to continually engage and elevate artists who work in media, themes, or content that are new ground for NUMU. NUMU’s Artists in Residence is an initiative to support artists in telling their own stories, in their own words and media, for the audience of Los Gatos and the greater South San Francisco Bay Region.

During the development of the exhibition, NUMU invites the artist in residence to mine the NUMU collection for objects and stories to uniquely weave the sense of place and history into their contemporary practice, resulting in an exhibition that neither NUMU, nor artist, would have otherwise created.

2022 is a blank slate. We feel tentative, but we have a chance to create something new, build new connections, and build resilience. Luz Donahue is an artist that has carved a practice by guiding people through unknown and sometimes difficult emotional pathways, towards unexpected insight.

Through In the Artist’s Studio, we get a glimpse at the creative process of someone who can reveal poetry from the chaos of the blank canvas. Her miniature watercolor paintings portray the richness that a universe of possibilities affords to those who are willing to listen.

This fine art juried exhibit is produced by the Los Gatos Art Association in partnership with NUMU, New Museum Los Gatos, where the exhibition will be held. It is open to all artists in the greater bay area from Napa to Carmel, CA. CASH PRIZES in each category. The theme is Listen, Learn, Change, Grow, matching the title of a recent campaign launched by the Los Gatos Chamber of Commerce. Our esteemed jurors include Preston Metcalf, Executive Director of the Triton Museum of Art in Santa Clara, and Julie Ericsson, Art Curator at New Museum Los Gatos.

Trees have played a meaningful role in Jane Olin’s life since childhood. Climate change and human mismanagement now threaten trees across the globe, but new research reveals previously unknown information about their complex social structures and ecological relationships. With renewed curiosity and a sense of urgency, Olin embarked on a wide-ranging exploration of trees. In the Company of Trees features photographs from that undertaking—the most recent additions to her series, Intimate Conversation. Olin’s expressive approach and her innovative process prints reveal a haunting and singular perspective on trees. Her work conveys both the seeds of hope and the seeds of impending destruction, which only human beings can resolve.

It’s that time of year again! Welcome the ninth annual ArtNow juried Santa Clara County high school art exhibition to the NUMU galleries! The exhibition and educational program give county high school students the experience of presenting artwork in a professional museum setting and the opportunity to participate in supporting educational and career development programs.

Photograph, Black Panthers outside the Black Panther Party National Headquarters Oakland, California, 1970. Photographer: Ilka Hartmann, Courtesy of Ilka Hartmann.

MARILYN MINTER. Satiated, 2003. C Print. From the collection of Wanda Kownacki.