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MONTEREY, CA (APRIL 3, 2026)—This summer, Monterey Museum of Art (MMA) presents The Art of Place—an exhibition season rooted in the light, land, and creative legacy of the Monterey Peninsula. Across four exhibitions, this season traces more than one hundred years of artistry representing the region's unique contributions to California art. From two exhibitions focused on influential women artists, who have created iconic images of Monterey's natural beauty to survey exhibitions highlighting Monterey architectural history and contemporary craft, the Museum invites visitors to explore the artist's role in shaping our experience of place. These voices create both a foundation that defines the Monterey Peninsula as an artistic stronghold and an expression of powerful artistic legacy. MMA's Executive Director, Corey Madden notes, "This exhibition season celebrates painters, photographers, and artistic visionaries who have defined the Monterey Peninsula in their own terms. Steeped in rich history, this region has always been a destination for artists who understand that place is not merely where you stand, but what you make of it. The Museum is thrilled to present this season as a testament to the Peninsula's place in California art."

Mary DeNeale Morgan: Doyenne of the Carmel Art Colony 

Guest Curated by Robert W. Edwards

April 30 – August 16, 2026

As the only museum retrospective of Mary DeNeale Morgan's artwork in more than eighty years, Mary DeNeale Morgan: Doyenne of the Carmel Art Colony reclaims DeNeale Morgan's rightful place in the history of California art. DeNeale Morgan devoted her career not only to artistic exploration but also to the early cultivation of the Carmel Art Colony—notably her roles in founding the Carmel Arts and Crafts Club, Forest Theater, Carmel School of Art, and Carmel Art Association. At a time when women painters were routinely dismissed as hobbyists, DeNeale Morgan's commitment to being recognized as a professional artist affirms her role in shaping California art history.

Guest curator Robert W. Edwards notes, "Carmel provided not only an escape and stunning scenery, but the opportunity to build an egalitarian art colony from scratch, one shaped by the mistakes of the past. This is precisely what DeNeale Morgan did with clear vision and determination when she moved permanently to Carmel in 1910 at the age of 42."1

MMA will publish a companion exhibition catalogue for Mary DeNeale Morgan: Doyenne of the Carmel Art Colony. The catalogue features a detailed history from the curator, Robert W. Edwards, and a foreword by MMA's Executive Director Corey Madden. The full-color catalogue will be available for purchase in May and distributed to partner museums, schools, and universities across California.

About the Curator 

Robert W. Edwards (b. 1949), a Vietnam-era veteran, completed his PhD in archaeology and art history at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1983, he moved to Washington, DC, where he was elected a Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks, Harvard University's Center for Byzantine Studies. Two years later, Edwards was appointed as an Associate Scholar. He has been a Visiting Professor in the History Department of the Catholic University of America and in the Department of Art at the University of Chicago. Institutions that have funded his research and publications include the J. Paul Getty Trust, British Institute of Archaeology in Ankara, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Catholic University at Louvain, Trustees for Harvard University, and Università di Bologna. He is the author of numerous publications, including the large monographs The Fortifications of Armenian Cilicia (Washington, DC, 1987) and Jennie V. Cannon: The Untold History of the Carmel and Berkeley Art Colonies (Oakland, 2012). He was a curator for the exhibition of Pedro de Lemos, Lasting Impressions: Works on Paper at Monterey Museum of Art (2015) and at the Stanford University Art Gallery (2017); Edwards also authored the catalogue for the Pedro de Lemos exhibition.

Jane Olin (b. 1939), Intimate Conversation 10, The Surface of Meaning, 2017, 50 x 48.5 in. © Jane Olin

Jane Olin: Some Trees 

Guest Curated by Cydney Payton

May 7 – August 23, 2026

Titled after the book and poem by John Ashbery, the exhibition features fifteen works by Carmel Valley photographer, Jane Olin. Known for her pinhole photography and alternative silver gelatin processes, Jane Olin: Some Trees includes a selection of work from her "Intimate Conversation" series, printed on a grand scale. Each work invites the viewer to interpret trees' kinship with humankind, alongside the individuality, complexity, and imposing nature of trees as a poetic and meditative dialogue with the nature that defines our landscape.

As Cydney Payton explains, "Jane Olin's silver gelatin photographs of twenty-first-century trees of Northern California evoke the strange and the familiar. The images give us a sense of what it was like for Olin to observe and communicate with trees. The trees remind us of those known, but also the palpable, imaginable, visitable past that Henry James spoke of."

MMA will publish a companion exhibition catalogue for Jane Olin: Some Trees. The catalogue features compelling commentary from Cydney Payton, a poem by Meredith Stricker, and a foreword by MMA's Executive Director Corey Madden. The full-color catalogue will include all 36 works from Olin's "Intimate Conversation" series and be available for purchase in August.

About the Curator 

Cydney Payton is an independent curator and writer, and former CEO and Chief Curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver and the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art. At MCA Denver she led the architectural process and campaign to build the first Gold LEED-certified museum in the US. Her leadership in the arts has been acknowledged by The New York Times, The Denver Post, Artforum, and Art in America. She has served as a nominator for the MacArthur Fellowship and as a juror for the Taishin Art Awards Taiwan and Creative Capital. As a co-juror with Spike Lee, she selected Shepherd Fairey's HOPE to represent the 2008 Obama Campaign. Since the late 1980s, Payton has curated groundbreaking exhibitions by such artists as David Altmejd, Morley Baer, Lynda Benglis, Yu-Chen Chou, Brad Kahlhamer, Susanne Kühn, Roberto Behar, and Rosario Marquardt, Wangechi Mutu, Arlene Shechet, Collier Schorr, and Fischli & Weiss, to name a few. Payton holds an MA in Curatorial Practice from California College of the Arts, with an emphasis on Architectural History and Theory.  

A Visual History of Art and Architecture in Monterey 

Guest Curated by Cynthia Wagner Weick and Joaquin Turner

May 7 – August 30, 2026

Combining two of Monterey's deepest traditions—art and architecture—this exhibition features over thirty artworks that reveal how artists have long served as the region's unofficial chroniclers, capturing the political, economic, and cultural forces that shaped Monterey Peninsula's built environment. Including works ranging from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, Cynthia Wagner Weick and Joaquin Turner explain: "The architecture of these twenty buildings reflects the influx of immigrants to Monterey from Spain, Mexico, the American east coast, England, Scotland, Asia, Portugal, and Italy among other countries. New cultures brought different architectural preferences, technologies, and skills, which were adapted to locally available materials and climatic conditions. Over time, these varied influences were layered and integrated in unique ways.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s artists from across the U.S. and the world began flocking to the Monterey area. Within two decades they had created a widely heralded colony that showcased the region's incomparable beauty. These artists played an essential role in preserving historic Monterey through documenting buildings in their creative work and actively supporting efforts to restore structures that might otherwise have been destroyed."

Myron Oliver (1891–1967), Old Custom House, Monterey, California, 1934, oil on canvas, 20 x 24 in. Loan from the Fine Arts Collection, U.S. General Services Administration, New Deal Art Project. L.2015.001

About the Curators

Dr. Cynthia Wagner Weick has pursued her lifelong interests in art and art history since retiring in Carmel by the Sea in 2017. She co-authored the 2019 book Preserving Nature: A Field Guide to the Art and Artists of the Monterey Bay, and has written articles and presented numerous talks on topics that bring together art, nature, conservation and ethnobotany. Weick has curated prior art exhibitions focused on fine art graphics from Eastern Europe as well as photographic portraits of women Olympians. She taught for 27 years in the business and engineering schools at University of the Pacific, where she published over thirty articles and books. Weick earned her Ph.D. from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and her M.S. and B.S. from The Ohio State University.

Joaquin Turner is an award-winning local artist and gallerist. Born among the gnarled cypress trees and windswept dunes of Fort Ord, Joaquin's childhood began with a visceral connection to the area's unique landscape and ethereal light. As a child, his father's career moved the family to Germany where he was introduced to some of the world's greatest art museums on family road trips throughout Europe. Inspired by the paintings of the Old Masters, he began painting, showing promise from an early age. Joaquin returned to the area as a teenager and discovered the works of the early Monterey Peninsula artists. He was mesmerized by the mystical quality of the California Tonalists' work and was inspired to paint the local landscape. Years later, Joaquin's work now hangs in his gallery alongside the works of the early California artists who have long inspired him.

Celebrating California Art: Crafting Culture and Tradition in Monterey 

May 14 – August 16, 2026

Comprised of works from the Museum's permanent collection, this exhibition seeks to explore the evolution and elevation of craft culture in Monterey over the last fifty years. Historically, craft has been thought of as secondary to fine art, mainly due to many of the art forms' origins as women's work and the perceived functionality of the medium. Featuring non-traditional techniques including textiles, collage, and ceramics, these pieces represent the progress of these mediums in the artistic canon. Here, craft is no longer a footnote to the story of California art. The work expresses the importance of culture and place.

Eve Tartar Brown (1910–2000), The Greatest Meeting of Land and Sea, c. 1980, collage of cut construction paper, 48 x 58 in.  Monterey Museum of Art; Gift of Ronda and Gordon Eubanks, 2011.002.

Support for the Art of Place Exhibition Season provided by Kevin Cartwright and Stephen Eimer, Susan DuCoeur, Lynn and Michael Hayford, Louise O'Connor, and Paula and Terry Trotter.

Land and People Acknowledgement  

Monterey Museum of Art (MMA) extends its respect to the Esselen and Rumsen/Rumsien Ohlone Tribes, on whose ancestral homeland the Museum stands. MMA also recognizes the Chalon, Mutsun, and Salinan Tribes, whose unceded lands encompass much of what is now Monterey County. In alignment with our mission to celebrate the diversity of California art—past, present, and future, MMA acknowledges and honors these communities, who have cared for and cultivated the Monterey Peninsula for millennia.

The Museum recognizes that our collection and exhibitions are inherently tied to the Indigenous land on which they were created, as California's landscape has long served as inspiration for generations of artists and creatives. MMA honors the Chalon, Esselen, Mutsun, Rumsen/Rumsien Ohlone, and Salinan Tribes—alongside all California tribes, past, present, and future—for their enduring connection and lasting impact on our shared lands and waters.

To learn more about the Indigenous lands we inhabit, visit https://native-land.ca/.