There’s a thought-provoking new art gallery in downtown San Jose, but you need to hurry if you want to check it out because it won’t be around long.

Curator Alexandra Stein calls “Wallflowers,” the pop-up art gallery on South First Street an “ExPop” — short for “experience pop-up,” the first of many installations she hopes to bring to Silicon Valley audiences.

Real estate broker Alexandra Stein is the curator behind “Wallflowers,” a weeklong pop-up art gallery in downtown San Jose, that opened Monday, March 17, 2025. (Sal Pizarro/Bay Area News Group) 

Inside the vacant storefront at 451 S. First St. — which was once home to both the Institute of Contemporary Art and the Works/San Jose gallery — Stein has showcased the work of several artists, including Matthew Rose, Alex Itin, Mila Libman and Jung Ran Bae. The gallery shares its name with “Wallflowers No. 2,” an installation by Alan Rath that is also on display in the two-level gallery, which will be open through March 22.

Most of the pieces on display — and for sale — are static, but there’s one element at Wallflowers that’s very much “in progress.” It’s The Tapestry Project, a reinvention of digital storytelling for the internet age that’s being led by Bob Stein, who founded the Criterion Collection (and also happens to be Alexandra Stein’s father-in-law.) He’s demonstrating the project through Wednesday, every hour from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

“Wallflowers” is running concurrently with Nvidia’s big tech conference, GTC, and while they’re not directly connected, Alexandra Stein said she thought it was a worthwhile opportunity to activate a vacant spot and give conference-goers a unique activity in downtown San Jose. (And it never hurts to let people know what possibilities are available for spaces like that.)

Visitors mingle at the opening night party for “Wallflowers,” a weeklong pop-up art gallery in downtown San Jose, on Monday, March 17, 2025. (Sal Pizarro/Bay Area News Group) 

The opening night party drew a good crowd, which included San Jose Museum of Art Executive Director S. Sayre Batton, ICA San Jose Executive Director James Leventhal, real estate broker Mark Ritchie, Metro Publisher Dan Pulcrano, San Jose Jazz Executive Director Brendan Rawson and Kerry Adams Hapner, San Jose’s director of cultural affairs.

The gallery opens at 11 a.m. each day and usually closes at 6 p.m., though Saturday’s last night will have extended hours and live music.

TECH BREAKFAST: Not everyone can be Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, but the legions of techies who lined up at SAP Center to hear his GTC keynote could at least eat like him Tuesday morning.

Denny’s parked its mobile diner truck in the downtown San Jose arena’s parking lot, handing out free samples of Nvidia Breakfast Bytes — a temporary menu item that’ll be available at restaurants starting March 19. Conference-goers got a half-portion of the menu item, which consists of four silver-dollar pancakes and four links of sausage. The lore is that Huang would eat the sausages wrapped in the pancakes, pigs-in-a-blanket style, topped with a bit of syrup.

Nvidia GTC attendees line up in front of Denny’s Mobile Diner for samples of Nvidia Breakfast Bytes, a temporary menu item at Denny’s inspired by a favorite meal of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. Denny’s distributed samples of the dish outside SAP Center in downtown San Jose before Huang’s keynote address at GTC, an AI technology conference, on Tuesday, March 18, 2025. (Sal Pizarro/Bay Area News Group) 

Nvidia and Denny’s have a long history together. Huang worked at the restaurant starting when he was 15 years old, and it was at a Denny’s in San Jose that he and co-founders Chris Malachowski and Curtis Priem sketched out the plan for Nvidia on a napkin in 1993.

“Denny’s will always be a special place for me,” Huang said in a statement released as part of the food promotion. “It’s where I learned that no task was too small to do well. This dish powered me through my long shifts and eventually inspired the birth of Nvidia at a Denny’s booth. Seeing it on the Denny’s menu is a true full-stack moment.”

ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION: Time sure flies when you’re smelling the garlic. I’m sure that’s what people will be thinking when Gilroy Garden opens Saturday, celebrating its 25th anniversary. The festivities include a new live show “25 Years: A Musical Celebration,” as well as a chance to stop by the Time Capsule Creation Station, where guests can put their memories of the park into a capsule that’ll be sealed and reopened for the 50th anniversary in 2050.

The anniversary celebration runs through Memorial Day weekend in May, and you can get more information at gilroygardens.org.