MONTEREY, CA.- In celebration of its 60th Anniversary Season, the Monterey Museum of Art announces “Michael Bevilacqua: Homegrown”. The exhibition will mark the first Central Coast showing of the Monterey Peninsula born and raised artist’s dynamic work.

“Growing up in Pacific Grove was like a trip without a suitcase,” remarked the prolific artist now residing in New York. Bevilacqua has been exhibited worldwide for over two decades, but his exhibition at MMA will mark his first return to his hometown.

With his finger on the pulse of current cultural dialogue, Bevilacqua draws inspiration from contemporary literature and music, synthesizes and layers images drawn from nature and technology, and creates work that is at once innovative, vibrant, and stylistically diverse.

“I am so pleased to be exhibiting a condensed version of the past 20 years’ worth of work at the Monterey Museum of Art. Yes, I moved to NYC a long time ago, but my roots are firmly planted in the Monterey Peninsula. It is that ‘Homegrown’ attitude that has given my work its energy through the years,” says the artist of his upcoming exhibition.

Michael Bevilacqua was born in Carmel, CA, in 1966. He attended Pacific Grove High School and studied at Santa Barbara City College (1985-1988), Long Beach State University (1988-1991) and the Cambridge College of Art and Technology (UK, 1986). His work has been exhibited in galleries and museums around the world. In addition to the Monterey Museum of Art, his work is included in the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, both of whom lent pieces that will be on view in the MMA exhibition.

The artist would like to thank several prominent New York galleries, collectors and foundations: Fredricks Freiser Gallery, Deitch Projects, Mike Danoff, Dakis Joannu of the Deste Foundation, Norman Dubrow and Hubert Neumann of Morton Neumann Foundation for their early support and recently Alison Wolfson and Belinda Neumann of Neumann Wolfson Art.

On Tuesday, August 20, from 6:00 – 7:30 pm, Bevilacqua will present, “Homecoming with Michael Bevilacqua: Reflections on Growing up in Pacific Grove.”