What does a town owe the resident who talks it into building a museum? In Los Gatos, the answer was a firehouse, leased for one dollar a year.
That resident was Dr. Ethel Dana, who felt no town could really call itself complete without a museum. The Town of Los Gatos agreed, handing over a vacated firehouse at the corner of Main Street and Tait Avenue to the newly formed Los Gatos Museum Association. The doors opened on May 20, 1967. Almost sixty years later, that same institution, now called New Museum Los Gatos, or NUMU, sits at the Civic Center Plaza on East Main Street, with a full calendar of 2026 events.
From a Retired Firehouse to the Civic Center Plaza
NUMU did not arrive at its current building in a straight line. For years, Los Gatos ran two separate museums under the same association: an art museum in that original firehouse, and a history museum housed in the Forbes Mill Flour Annex. The two merged in 2015, when the association marked its 50th anniversary by opening the combined New Museum Los Gatos at the Civic Center Plaza, the building most residents know today.
That history matters because it explains what NUMU actually is. It is not a converted storefront that decided to hang some paintings. It is the physical result of one persistent resident's argument that a town this size needed somewhere to keep its own record, an argument the Town accepted literally for a dollar a year.
A Teen Art Show That Outgrew the Town
The clearest evidence that NUMU has become something bigger than its footprint is ArtNow, the museum's juried high school art exhibition. It started as a local Los Gatos program. It now draws submissions from more than 50 schools stretching from Palo Alto to Gilroy. The 2026 edition, themed "Before/Between/Beyond," featured 97 student artists whose work ranged from responses to war-torn Vietnam to non-traditional self-portraits.
A museum operating out of a repurposed firehouse became the venue where teenagers across the entire county compete for a juried show. That expansion did not happen by accident. It happened because people on the museum's board treated ArtNow as worth building past Los Gatos's own borders. Michael Parsons, a Monte Sereno resident who served on NUMU's board from 2006 to 2018 and as board president in 2012, was a founding member of ArtNow. He and his wife Alyce, married 63 years, later established the Mike and Alyce Parsons Art Endowment to help fund the museum's long-term work.
What's Actually On View Before the Year Ends
The museum's event calendar runs through the rest of 2026, and most of it costs nothing to attend.
| Event | Date | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| New Additions 2026 | On view now, limited run | Artwork and historical artifacts donated to NUMU's permanent collection between 2020 and 2025 |
| Free First Sunday | First Sunday of every month, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. | Free general admission and guided tours, no registration fee |
| Reawakening exhibitions | On view through early November | Two exhibitions built with the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe and San Jose State University, featuring photography of tribal members by Tribal Photographer Kike Arnal |
| Reawakening Community Day | November 7 | Family activities, refreshments, and exhibition-based programming honoring Muwekma Ohlone culture and the tribe's pursuit of federal recognition |
| Peace, Love + Art Benefit Auction | November 15, La Rinconada Country Club | The museum's benefit auction, with new awards including one named for founder Dr. Ethel Dana |
The Reawakening exhibitions are the clearest sign of how far NUMU's mission has moved from its firehouse origins. The project promotes deeper understanding of local indigenous art, culture, and history, and it preserves knowledge tied to the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe's ongoing fight for federal recognition. That is a different kind of civic work than a small town museum is usually asked to do, and NUMU is doing it in partnership with a university anthropology program, not as a side exhibit.
In its coverage of NUMU's exhibitions, The Los Gatan put it simply:
"Locals know this is not a large museum, yet it captures the essence of where we live."
Beat Poets and Backyard History
NUMU's programming leans into the parts of Los Gatos history that do not make it onto a walking tour brochure. The museum has referenced Neal Cassady, the Beat generation figure who lived in Los Gatos, as part of its broader effort to document the town's less obvious past. An earlier exhibition, "I Know a Place," pulled from community-donated memorabilia from the 1960s, the decade when the Bay Area's population surged as the technology industry that would become Silicon Valley took root. Amy Long, the exhibition's curator, shared her own experience of living in Los Gatos during that decade alongside the artifacts on display.
None of that history is visible from the sidewalk outside the Civic Center Plaza. It is only visible if you walk in, which is exactly what the free first Sunday program is built to make easy.
The Museum's Own Argument for Itself
NUMU's founding idea, that a town is not complete without somewhere to keep its record, is still the organizing logic behind everything on this year's calendar. The Reawakening exhibitions extend that record to a history that predates the town's founding by centuries. ArtNow extends it forward, into the work of teenagers who will be telling the next version of this area's story. The Peace, Love + Art Benefit Auction on November 15 exists to keep funding all of it.
For a museum that started with a one-dollar lease on a building the fire department no longer wanted, that is a fairly good run.
If you're already planning to be downtown this fall, Los Gatos's calendar has more going on than most residents realize, and Elsa Garza puts a running list of what's local and worth your time in front of clients and neighbors all year long. Reach out if you'd like it in your inbox.
