In the thick of the holiday season, many of us are spending lots of time with relatives ... Perhaps, it feels like too much time! But if you have any curiosity about where you come from, your elders hold the key to that history, stretching back through the generations. KQED’s South Bay Arts reporter Rachael Myrow offers this profile of an artist who dismissed her parents’ stories…until one day, she woke up to their value, and put pen and brush to paper.

Belle Yang Crossing Cultures

There’s a brand new art museum at UC Davis, showing works by notable artists who taught at the university, like the painter Wayne Thiebaud, and bad boy sculptor Robert Arneson. Curators assembled 10 of Arneson’s ceramic toilet sculptures from far and wide. Yes, toilets. Rachael Myrow flushes out the story for us.

Arneson's Toilets

Most of us look away when we pass the homeless. That’s reaction is what Street Requiem” attempts to confront. Choral groups around the world have performed the work -- and donated proceeds to support the homeless in cities from Melbourne, Australia to San Francisco. Now a Silicon Valley choir is taking up the work.

Choral Project Ignites Compassion for the Homeless with Street Requiem

The protests at Standing Rock show the power of pan-tribal political organizing. But it’s not the first time members of different tribes have banded together to pursue a political win on the national stage. That would be the occupation of Alcatraz 1969-1971, and it came as a direct result of the mass migration of tens of thousands of Native Americans to California, starting in the 1950s. That story is covered in the exhibition Cement Prairie, on display at New Museum Los Gatos (NUMU).

What Standing Rock Protesters Can Learn from Los Gatos Exhibition

Like a number of works up now, Airport Insecurity doesn’t directly address the Trump Administration, but it might as well. Theater seasons are usually planned months in advance, so several Silicon Valley theater companies are surprised to find themselves resonating with the anxieties of this political moment…as KQED’s South Bay Arts Reporter Rachael Myrow explains.

Silicon Valley Theatre Scene Bristles with Political Edge in the Age of Trump

A new exhibition in Santa Cruz pays tribute to the men and women whose labor makes the world go round.

Hung Liu at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History

History professor Stephen Mucher makes a case for the importance of Oliver Wendell Holmes' verse, penned 50 years after Francis Scott Key wrote the others, as a way for Americans to unite around the principles of the Constitution.

About ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’s’ Obscure Fifth Verse

New York media artist Ben Rubin encoded audio from the moon landing.    For your listening convenience, I've just included the key phrase, "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind."

San Jose Semaphore Clip

Jimmy Waters cracked the second San Jose Semaphore code when he realized it was an audio message. But at first, he had it running 5.5 times faster than normal. It sounded like "chipmunks." Once he adjusted the sample rate from 44.1KHz to 8KHz ...

San Jose Semaphore Clip - The Chipmunk Version

Yosemite National Park has inspired countless painters and photographers. Now, the famous LA-based visual artist David Hockney brings his take on the iconic landscape to Silicon Valley… The 28 images were all produced on an iPad. KQED’s South Bay Arts Reporter Rachael Myrow explains.

Hockney In Yosemite

Chicano art, or Chicanx art, as people say these days to de-gender the phrase, covers a wide range of political issues, from labor rights to immigration. KQED’s South Bay Arts Reporter Rachael Myrow has been talking to artists whose work shows how the movement is gathering energy in the current political climate.

Chicanx Art in the Age of Trump

Back in 2007, reporter Lita Martinez profiled San Jose Tofu for a KQED show called "Pacific Time."

KQED Arts

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