Contemporary Art in San Jose

When one think of art museums in the Bay Area, the top names come to the mind are probably SFMOMA, De Young, ... etc. However, there are also many lesser known "hidden gems." My favorite free art museum is Cantor Art Center (and the Anderson Collection next to it) in Stanford. Another free museum that I frequently visit is Triton in Sunnyvale. It showed works from local photography competitions, for example. I needed to run some errands in San Jose downtown this Saturday and used this opportunity to visit  SJ Institute of Contemporary Art (also free admission)

One series of works featured pages from old magazines with faces covered up faces. I can understand the meaning but to be honest I think it's just too "easy". Another "easy" work was related to geography: it's the US map with state and state capital names switched around. Sometimes "easy" could also be "interesting"

井山裕太獨攬日本七大圍棋賽冠軍

日前日本棋手井山裕太成功贏得「十段」圍棋賽冠軍，完成了日本棋壇前無古人的壯舉，那就是同時手執七大賽冠軍獎座！想想日本棋壇多年人才輩出，高手如雲，武宮正樹、加藤正夫、趙治勳、林海峰（後兩位雖來自韓台，但為日本棋院成員）卻從無人有此成就，因此這在棋界可說是一則震撼性不少的新聞。可惜的是，今時今日的日本棋壇已不再手執牛耳，和以上高手叱咤風雲的年代水準有一大段距離，要知道那時代及更早前日本冠軍即是世界冠軍！而過去十多年世界冠軍一直是中韓棋手的天下。井山裕太七冠獲得傳媒的關注，也遠低於多次贏得韓國及世界冠軍的李世石和AlphaGo之戰。從未在世界賽奪冠的井山裕太，相信會有更多日本棋迷期望他作出零的突破。 這篇來自中國媒體的文章，可能有少少偏見，但某一程度上對井山七冠含金量的評估也有點代表性。