The Los Gatos History Project is NUMU’s unprecedented effort to catalog and dive deeper into its permanent collection. This exhibition, the first to come out of the project, presents a selection of objects that have given the museum more questions than answers. By taking a critical look at these objects and the stories they tell, the exhibition will prompt visitors to ask: Who made these objects? Why did the museum collect them? What can we learn from them? And whose stories are missing? Through this exhibition, visitors will gain a greater understanding of museum collecting practices, and a greater appreciation for the hidden complexities of Los Gatos history.

Opened in September 2023, this demonstration and prep lab serves as a dedicated space to display artifacts, conduct conservation efforts, and present public educational programs. In this space, NUMU demonstrates that history is anything but static! The Collections Lab is open Friday-Sunday during museum hours.

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.

Mitra Fabian creates a surreal and somber mixed-media installation that intersects the natural world, built environments, climate change, and human interference. This project will include Fabian’s recognizable organic sculptural forms as well as the use of resistors, capacitors, and diodes. But it will also reveal animal elements and a wooden shelter ravaged by fire. This installation is a contemplative conglomeration of her six years living in the Santa Cruz Mountains where she and her wife encountered first-hand experiences of the CZU fires, catastrophic rain, wind, and downed trees.

Carly Slade presents miniature, mixed-media vignettes of real-world structures as they appear in digital images from satellite mapping cameras. Composed of ceramics, building materials, and needlework, the layers of planning and effort within these miniature artworks mirror the human effort and experiences that activate the location in the real world.