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1/3/2002

Is the Medium?

San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose

is the Message?:
Contemporary Art from the Permanent Collection

San Jose Museum of Art presents the second in a series of permanent collection exhibitions; Is the Medium the Message?: Contemporary Art from the Permanent Collection. This exhibition brings together paintings, sculpture, video, and photography-based works by outstanding living artists such as Laurie Reid, Emil Lukas, Rob Craigie, Anne Appleby, Jim Campbell, and Mildred Howard. The show also addresses some of the key questions surrounding contemporary art in a light-hearted and accessible manner.

In a recent permanent collection show entitled Collecting Our Thoughts: The Community Responds to Art in the Permanent Collection (June 24 - September 23, 2001), SJMA provided response cards for museum visitors to express their opinions about the art on view. This enabled the curatorial and education staff to gather written responses to the work in the galleries, as viewers are increasingly challenged by contemporary art that seems to ask more questions than it answers.

Organized as a sequel to Collecting Our Thoughts, this exhibition continues the dialogue begun in June of 2001. The exhibition brings back a few key works from the previous exhibition and displays them again in a new context, as well as introduces a large number of newly selected pieces from the SJMA permanent collection. Comprising a thought-provoking assortment of works falling loosely under the rubric of Post-Modernism, the exhibition will address some of the issues raised by our previous visitors, which are critical to approaching contemporary art: beauty, identity, irony, the appearance of simplicity, and the use of found materials. According to Senior Curator JoAnne Northrup, the exhibition will attempt to further address such questions as How do you define Post-Modernism?; What ever happened to beauty?; Why is so much contemporary art political?; Should artists always be sincere?; Isn't art supposed to be made to last?; and Shouldn't great artists be original?

In the words of one visitor who responded to Collecting Our Thoughts, "This exhibit is a stroke of genius! People need to be reminded to look. At the Louvre, I saw people race up to a piece, snap a picture, and race off, never looking at what they photographed! We also need to be reminded to meditate, reflect on what we see. This is not thinking in the logical sense, but an interior exploration." Whether or not they viewed Collecting Our Thoughts, visitors to Is the Medium the Message? will discover that contemporary art thus contextualized is engaging and a stimulus to further discovery.

MUSEUM HOURS: Tues - Sunday, 11am - 5pm; Friday, 11am - 10pm; closed Monday.

ADMISSION IS FREE TO PUBLIC EVERY DAY.

Docent Tours: Available every day at 12:30pm and 2:30pm; additional tour is available on Fridays at 6:30pm.
For 24 hr. recorded information, call (408) 294-2787.

The San Jose Museum of Art and its educational programs are supported by the City of San Jose; the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency; the Arts Commission, City of San Jose; the California Arts Council; the William Randolph Hearst Education Endowment; the David and Lucile Packard Foundation; the Koret Foundation; and Museum members.

San Jose Museum of Art
110 South Market Street (at San Fernando)
408-271-6881
San Jose, CA 95113-2383

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