MONTEREY, CA.- Monterey Museum of Art rounds out its Winter 2026 Season with two exhibitions that highlight California artists who are collectively expanding the techniques and imagery used in creating contemporary landscape photography and ceramics. Guest curated by Helaine Glick, Landscape ReEnvisioned asks visitors to reconsider landscape photography—moving beyond a beautiful but more straightforward image to layered, experimental, and material approaches that often offer both personal stories and social commentary about the simultaneously resilient and imperiled land.

Similarly, Spirits and Memory: The Ceramics of Pam Murakami offers a unique interpretation of traditional ceramic forms and highlights a broad set of cultural and historical influences that shaped Murakami’s artistic vision. Conventional ceramic pitchers (ewers) are re-imagined and reflect the reality of multicultural influences, featuring a rabbit, an Oreo® cookie, and a hula dancer. In beautifully rendering an ordinary household appliance such as a toaster into clay adorned with Asian, Western, and Hawai’i-related imagery, Murakami’s work challenges visitors to the see the versatility of clay itself while considering stereotypical gender roles and ethnic identity.

Corey Madden, MMA Executive Director, notes, “California art, particularly in the Central California region, has always been a collection of fearlessly creative interpretations that incorporate a diverse range of cultures, influences, and techniques. The result broadens or sometimes rebels against established narratives and conventions. The art and artists of Landscape ReEnvisioned and Spirits and Memory perfectly embody what California art is today.”

Landscape ReEnvisioned | January 29 – April 26, 2026
Guest Curator Helaine Glick

Featuring California artists Debra Achen, Tony Bellaver, Adrienne Defendi, Charlotte Schmid-Maybach, Brian Taylor, and Vincent Waring, Landscape ReEnvisioned extends the iconic tradition of landscape photography in Monterey Bay and Big Sur, the birthplace of the West Coast photography movement and a home base for its chief proponents Ansel Adams and Edward Weston. These six artists offer individual and inventive methods, working hands-on while devising new avenues of photographic presentation that includes tapestry, book arts, collage, sculpture. They work in multiple media and take advantage of both historic and contemporary photographic processes, including the use of digital technologies.

Guest Curator Helaine Glick notes, “Photography continues to evolve to meet the moment, as it always has done. Landscape ReEnvisioned shares how these six groundbreaking California artists have stitched, folded, burnt, painted, drawn upon and collaged their photographs, establishing innovative new forms to express their deeply personal perspectives on the landscape.”

Spirits and Memory: The Ceramics of Pam Murakami | January 23 – April 26, 2026
Guest Curator Gary Smith

Spirits and Memory: The Ceramics of Pam Murakami showcases the 40-year career of local ceramicist and longtime Hartnell College educator Pam Murakami. The work reflects Murakami’s appreciation for imperfection and the many historical influences that have impacted her work. Weaving together aspects of Chinese pottery, Japanese tea ceremony, mythic entities, household items, and more, Murakami's work combines traditional ceramics with her own personal history and beliefs. While Murakami’s clay works often start from a traditional utilitarian form, they expand the expressive possibilities of clay as an art medium, rather than a material used for functional purposes.

Gary Smith, Guest Curator and Pam Murakami’s longtime colleague, states, “How does an Ajax® container become an art form? When Pam Murakami sculpts one from raw clay, hand paints it with images drawn from an expansive set of historical and cultural influences and elevates it to ask the viewer to consider shifts in what was once considered ‘women’s work’.”

MMA will publish a companion exhibition catalogue for Spirits and Memory: The Ceramics of Pam Murakami. The catalogue features a statement from Pam Murakami herself, a foreword by MMA Executive Director Corey Madden, and an essay by Gary Smith, which offers a nuanced understanding of Murakami’s vast body of work. The full-color catalogue will be available for purchase beginning in January and distributed to partner museums, schools, and universities across California including Hartnell College.

Helaine Glick is an independent curator and art writer. She is a former Assistant Curator at Monterey Museum of Art, where she worked for over fifteen years. While at MMA, she curated a wide range of exhibitions featuring works on paper, paintings, and photography, and major photography exhibitions, In Sharp Focus: The Legacy of Monterey Photography, and Bob Kolbrener—In Real Time.

Gary Smith is an educator, gallerist, and curator based in Carmel Valley with a specialized focus on ceramics. For more than 30 years, he taught ceramics and art history courses at Hartnell College in Salinas, California, and co-directed the Hartnell Art Gallery for nearly 50 years. Smith also served as the Central California Coordinator for the Community Colleges Study Abroad Program and an instructor for the Boronda International Study Travel Program, teaching in London, Paris, and Florence.

Additional Winter Season 2026 Exhibitions

Pictures of Belonging: Miki Hayakawa, Hisako Hibi, and Miné Okubo | February 6 – April 19, 2026

Spanning eight decades, Pictures of Belonging: Miki Hayakawa, Hisako Hibi, and Miné Okubo reveals a broader picture of the American experience through the artworks and life stories of three trailblazing Japanese American women in dialogue with each other for the first time.

Celebrating California Art: Artistic Alliance in Monterey, 1942–1946 | January 9–April 26, 2026

A focused exhibition featuring artists from the Monterey Peninsula who witnessed the injustice of their fellow citizens losing their property, and then being forcibly removed and imprisoned. The exhibition will also include the rarely exhibited 1945 Monterey Petition: A Democratic Way of Life for All, which advocated for the safe return of Japanese Americans to their homes