Why not start off 2022 with a free look at some of the best art in town? This Friday, the San Jose Museum of Art gets the year started right with three hours of complimentary art, ranging from vibrant abstract paintings (Break + Bleed) to inquisitive looks at the human body (Our Whole, Unruly Selves). The evening also includes live music from San Jose Jazz, and light bites and hefty pours from el cafecito. It’s a great opportunity to take in Do Ho Suh: Karma one last time, before the mind-bending sculpture leaves the museum later this month.

First Friday
Fri, 6-9pm, Free
San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose

The portrait—especially the nude—holds a crucial space in the artistic canon, but the form is heavy with baggage regarding whose bodies are displayed, how and by whom. SJMA’s Our whole, unruly selves, which runs through June, explores and questions those complications. A cross-disciplinary group show with work ranging from the 1960s to the present, Our whole, unruly selves features work from POC, queer, immigrant and disabled artists. As groups historically made invisible or fetishized in art, the show aims to include a spectrum of perspectives and to deconstruct the box of “representation” so many artists feel stuck within today.
Our Whole, Unruly Selves
Fri, 6pm, Free
San Jose Museum of Art

This Friday, a new sound will echo through downtown San Jose, connecting the city to the world at large in new ways, when Beta Space: Trevor Paglen opens at SJMA. The installation can be heard emitting from the museum’s clock tower for the next year. Paglen, a 2017 MacArthur Fellow, has spent the last decade and a half addressing issues of global surveillance, data collection and other government activities in a myriad of mediums. Beta Space continues this work through sound by vocalizing sets of data from entities such as Cal Fire and the UN.

Beta Space: Trevor Paglen
Fri, 6pm, Free
San Jose Museum of Art

If you hear a collective sigh of relief at noon, that’s just the world tuning into San Jose Art Museum’s free “Art Fix Wednesday.” Weekly throughout the pandemic, SJMA docents have taken to the internet to discuss the museum’s many stunning works, like Palestinian artist Mona Hatoum’s broken-glass installation Drowning Sorrows, and Imin Yeh’s tiny film collage work “300 non-instagrams,” which emerged out of a residency with Recology. Lasting half an hour, and discussing two pieces at a time, Art Fix Wednesday will set your head right before you get back to the grind.

Art Fix Wednesday
Wed, 12pm, Free

San Jose’s glorious Museum of Art stays open late one night a month for an evening of live music, night bites and encounters with art. This month’s First Friday celebration, sponsored by Facebook, features music by Guera/April Garcia and DJ Chale Brown. The museum cafe is open, as are all the current exhibitions at SJMA, including Speed City, an archival look back at the civil rights struggle through the prism of athletics; and the related exhibit With Drawn Arms, in which San Jose State sprinter Tommie Smith collaborated with artist Glenn Kaino to explore the dimensions of Smith’s famous raised-fist protest at the 1968 Olympic Games.

First Friday
Fri, 5pm, Free
San Jose Museum of Art

Local event promotion collective The Come Up is teaming with the San Jose Museum of Art and SJMADE to curate this week’s Sound Scaping. The event features food, drinks and live performances by lo-fi hip-hop producer Knowmadic, indie lounge lizard Mild Monk, R&B chanteuse Kamiko and jazz pianist/vocalist Joy Hackett. While at the museum, check out the exhibits in between sets: “Dinh Q. Lê: True Journey is Return” is the artist’s first major US show in over a decade. In a gorgeous way, Le transforms diasporic themes of exile, memory and global estrangement into a serene experience.

Sound Scaping
Thu, 6pm, $5
San Jose Museum of Art

Good news, fashionistas: You can now justify the expense for that hot dress or cool jacket you bought this summer. The San Jose Museum of Art is throwing a scintillating party. The Mirror Ball is the hip after-party for the Wonder Ball gala and fundraiser earlier in the evening. The after-party will feature cocktails, food, live music, dancing and intimate late-night access to all the museum’s current exhibitions, not to mention plenty of potentially well-dressed and attractive art lovers. What better way to meet an intriguing new someone than in front of a beautiful painting? SJMA members get in for just $75.The Mirror Ball
Sat, 9pm, $100
San Jose Museum of Art

Mosaic Silicon Valley returns with an evening of music, dance and poetry—all aimed at building communities through art and the spirit of activism. ArtRage: Truth Be Told is an evening of live performances held in the same gallery currently hosting “Rise Up!” The exhibition features works focused on current social justice movements such as Black Lives Matter, #MeToo and LGBTQ issues. Catch percussionist PC Muñoz and San Jose rapper Dem One in their musical collaboration Rightstarter, as well as local spoken word artist and poet Lorenz Dumuk, and dancer Khalilah Ramirez, who will perform her Dance of Peace.

ArtRage: Truth Be Told
Thu, 7pm, $5
San Jose Museum of Art

World famous photographer Annie Leibovitz switched roles and went in front of the lens Wednesday night at the opening reception for her traveling exhibition Pilgrimage and San Jose Museum of Art.

The event drew a capacity crowd at the museum, which will host the exhibition until September. Pilgrimage strays from the pop culture portraits Leibovitz is most famous for with images of landscapes and artifacts, including Abraham Lincoln’s hat and gloves, Elvis Presley’s 1957 Harley Davidson and Emily Dickinson’s only surviving dress. More info on the exhibition.

Photos by Metro photographer Aron Cooperman.