San Jose Museum of Art

After brunch on Saturday, January 8, 2011, I drove down to San Jose to see the San Jose Museum of Art. I figured if I explore museums in other cities, I should explore them when I'm in the bay area as well.

I took some pictures on this excursion.

I first visited the special exhibit on Leo Villareal. He builds luminous animated light sculptures. Some look like softly changing abstract paintings, others like the vision test for blind spots, and still others evolve like Conway's Game of Life. Some of his pieces are mesmerizing.

The museum also had a regular exhibit on photography and an exhibit of photographs connecting the viewer with people/things one doesn't ordinarily see. There was also an exhibit of modern art exploring life and breathing. I enjoyed more, however, the exhibit on art with a retro look. It included things from pedal-powered juicers to a video of a man in Turkey using bagpipes to inflate a flat tire. For this exhibit's highlights, see the text in the pictures.

Also, there was a tiny, neat exhibit in the museum's cafe about stroboscopes, high-speed cameras that can capture events such as bullets through apples.

Overall, I found the museum disappointingly small for such a large city. It effectively has only five large galleries. I spent a bit over an hour in it. I saw some neat stuff though (and quite of a bit of non-neat stuff).

Because my visit was faster than I expected, I trotted over to The Tech Museum, kitty-corner across a park. I wandered around the outside, looked at the brochures for its advertised exhibits, examined a map, and browsed the gift shop, but decided not to pay the entry fee to see the displays. I headed home.