Past Exhibitions

As the year draws to a close and we celebrate the grand finale of our exhibition season, the Monterey Museum of Art (MMA) proudly presents Iluminado—an immersive installation that transforms the galleries into a space of light, reflection, and connection. With FREE admission throughout December, MMA is set to launch a series of programs for adults, students, and families. Whether it's Free Family Fun Day, a Creative Grounds workshop, or MMA's Winter Art Market, December promises to be a vibrant month at the Museum!

Iluminado marks a new chapter for MMA and signifies a transformative view of art and its role in space and community. Join us in this seasonal celebration of unity, creativity, and wonder.

Become a Part of a Living Art Installation

Created by artist Hanif Panni in collaboration with Domini Anne and inspired by a body of work by photographer Joe Ramos, Iluminado reimagines community photographs as shifting constellations of light, illuminating stories of place and belonging.

Part of MMA's Art Connecting Community initiative, Iluminado invites visitors to explore, create, and contribute to a collective experience. Through artmaking and shared storytelling, this evolving work celebrates the transformative power of light, creativity, and community.

Luminaries

Luminaries extends the spirit of Iluminado beyond the museum walls, illuminating the voices of young photographers from Salinas and Seaside. Created under the mentorship of documentary photographer Joe Ramos, the Monterey Museum of Art's 2025 Artist in Residence, the project celebrates light as a bridge between art, community, and self-expression.

Guided by Ramos—whose work continues the photographic legacy of Ansel Adams and Imogen Cunningham—students learned to see beauty and meaning in their everyday lives. Their photographs reflect identity, family, and pride in place, offering a vibrant portrait of Monterey County's next generation of storytellers.

Luminaries is presented by Monterey Museum of Art in partnership with the Boys & Girls Clubs of Salinas and Seaside.

Iluminado Programming

Join us for a month-long series of FREE workshops, activities, celebrations, and so much more!

Meet the Artists 

Joe Ramos—I grew up in farm labor camps around Soledad in the Salinas Valley. Most farm labor camps have been razed, but nonetheless, I have many vivid memories growing up with families, single Filipino bachelors, and Mexican braceros who lived in the camps. I took a great interest in photography and managed to acquire a Kodak Brownie Camera at about age 8 or 9 and would photograph my playmates in the camp whenever I was able to purchase film.

After graduating from Gonzales Union High School, and later from Hartnell College, I studied photography at the San Francisco Art Institute with Imogen Cunningham and was mentored by Richard Conrat, Dorothea Lange's last assistant. Conrat encouraged me to pursue documentary photography of my Filipino/Mexican family and friends.

Whereas I mostly took photographs of people and portraits over the years, I've come to enjoy taking landscapes and botanical photographs. Fairly recently, I've come to realize the genres of my photography, landscapes, botanical, and people, are interconnected to my experience of growing up in the Salinas Valley.

I continue to explore the many generations of people and family, the natural and agricultural flora, and the alarmingly fast-changing landscapes of the Salinas Valley. While the natural beauty of the Salinas Valley persists, I bear witness to how the landscape changes, not always in a beautiful way. There is a connectivity between the land, the people, and the flora of the Salinas Valley, and I've enjoyed visually documenting all three for the past 60 years.

Hanif Wondir and Domini Anne's partnership is not defined by a single genre, but by a decade-long exploration of what it means to create artistic experiences that are a unified, yet completely collaborative experience. Over years of multidisciplinary fashion and performance, they have woven a creative ecosystem that extends far beyond individual pieces. Their work is a living dialogue that has cultivated a natural, collaborative community, inviting Monterey's most brilliant creatives to contribute and shine.

Each project is an opportunity for every participant to showcase their own talents and uplift a collective vision. Their work continues to transform art into a participatory, living experience—each piece becoming a celebration of collaboration itself. Their hallmark is a shared mind: an ability to connect the peninsula's most visionary creatives into unified, transformative works that spotlight individual talent while celebrating collective creative brilliance.

This exhibition was made possible by support from Barbara Schilling and Richard Carr.