All wrapped up
Children’s Discovery Museum of San Jose’s new exhibit has young visitors all wrapped up in TapeScape, an interactive art installation by Minnesota-based artist Eric Lennartson.
Built from more than 24 miles of ordinary clear packing tape, TapeScape is a multi-level landscape of tunnels, bridges and slides for visitors of all ages to explore while discovering connections between art, architecture, engineering and play.
This is the museum’s third TapeScape installation, and, as with each of Lennartson’s installations, the design is unique to San Jose. The 2026 installation was constructed over five days with the help of local volunteers.
Neighborhood Notes
ALMADEN/CAMBRIAN/ROSE GARDEN/WILLOW GLEN: Dozens of San Jose high school seniors are among about 16,000 high school students in the graduating class of 2027 — less than 1% of U.S. seniors —named semifinalists in the National Merit Scholarship Program.
The semifinalists, announced on Sept. 9, qualified based on their scores on the Preliminary SAT. About 95 percent are expected to attain finalist standing on the strength of an application detailing academic performance, participation in activities, employment and leadership. About half the finalists will win a National Merit Scholarship, to be announced in the spring.
Among Rose Garden area campuses, the semifinalists from Basis Independent Silicon Valley are Aaron Cohen, Melody Dai, Siyu Fan, Jonathan Gao, Nico Gong, Ethan Guo, Garrett Guo, Anusha Hirlekar, Shivani Iyer, Govind Krishnan, Eric Li, Warren Li, Heding Liu, Xinyue Liu, Niyantra Mohan Babu, Lucas Quan, Vedh Reddy, Naman Siddheshwar, Carolina Sun, Fred Sun, Elaine Wang, Evelyn Wang, Harrison Wu, Zimeng Xiong, Ethan Xu, Francesca Yang, Liyuan Yang, Brian Yu, Leo Zeng, Yaxin Zheng, David Zhou, Sarah Zhou, Yifan Zhou, Jack Zhu and Lauren Zhuang,
The semifinalists from Bellarmine College Preparatory are Jason Bechtel, Vihan Bhattacharjee, Joshua Cardenas, Ethan Cheung, Rohan Dhameja, Jayant Goyal, Vedant Hathalia, Wesley Hawkins, Aarav Iyer, Nikhil Jayanthi, Andrew Lei, Andrew Li, Matt Li, Jason Liau, Oliver Lin, Ryan Liong, Samuel Ma, Brandon Mai, Ronak Menezes, Tuhin Mythil, Neil Phadke, Adrian Pham, David Pham, Benjamin Quach, Brooks Rizvi, Rohan Sinha, Adhrit Tiwari, John Xie, Alexander Yin, Austin Yoo, Andy Zhan and Myles Zhang.
In the Cambrian neighborhood, the Branham High School semifinalists are Asher Ahn, Nithya Karambakkam, Clement Koh, Xutong Meng and Georgios Polyzotis.
In Almaden Valley, Pioneer High School senior Selma Emekci was named a semifinalist, as were Leland High School seniors Ishaan G. Desai, Krishay Madhav, Lasya Madineni, Krio T. Moon, Yash Sethuraman and Evan W. Xu.
Willow Glen is represented by Presentation High School seniors Jeanelle Dao, Mallory Fidrych, Aleeza Sagarwala and Isha Singh.