Monterey Museum of Art Opens Fall Season With California Artists in Focus

The Monterey Museum of Art welcomed visitors on Saturday, September 12, 2026, for the opening celebration of its Fall 2026 Exhibition Season, introducing a new group of exhibitions that place California artists, cultural history and creative expression at the center of the museum experience.

The free opening celebration, scheduled from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., gives visitors an opportunity to explore the museum’s newest exhibitions while participating in activities connected to the featured artwork.

Two exhibitions are at the heart of the fall opening: “Rex Ray: We Are All Made of Light” and “Born of the Bear Dance: Dugan Aguilar’s Photographs of Native California.”

Together, they offer two distinct perspectives on art in California. One celebrates the colorful visual language of a prominent Bay Area artist, while the other documents Native California communities through the photography of an Indigenous artist whose work captured ceremonies, landscapes and everyday experiences.

Rex Ray Brings Color and California Creativity

“Rex Ray: We Are All Made of Light” focuses on the work of Rex Ray, an artist and designer closely associated with the San Francisco Bay Area.

Ray developed a recognizable visual style that combined bold colors, abstract forms and carefully constructed compositions. His work crossed boundaries between fine art and commercial design, reflecting the creative flexibility that has long characterized California’s artistic communities.

The Monterey exhibition gives audiences an opportunity to experience his distinctive approach while considering the relationship between design, abstraction and contemporary visual culture.

Visitors attending Saturday’s opening can also create their own “We Are All Made of Light” screenprint to take home. The interactive component extends the exhibition beyond simply viewing finished artwork, allowing audiences to participate directly in the creative process.

That approach reflects a broader trend among museums seeking to make exhibitions more engaging for visitors of different ages and levels of familiarity with art.

Dugan Aguilar Documents Native California

The museum’s second major fall exhibition turns attention toward photography and Native California history.

“Born of the Bear Dance: Dugan Aguilar’s Photographs of Native California” presents the work of photographer Dugan Aguilar, whose images documented Indigenous communities throughout the state.

Aguilar was Mountain Maidu, Pit River and Walker River Paiute. His photography offered an Indigenous perspective on Native California life at a time when representations of Native communities were often shaped by outsiders.

His images document people, gatherings, landscapes and cultural practices while presenting Native Californians as contemporary communities rather than figures belonging only to the past.

Photography has long played an important role in recording California’s rapidly changing social and physical landscape. Aguilar’s work adds an essential perspective to that visual record by documenting communities through personal cultural understanding.

The Monterey exhibition allows a wider audience to encounter those photographs within the context of California art and history.

Two Exhibitions, Different Views of California

Placing the work of Rex Ray and Dugan Aguilar within the same fall season creates an interesting contrast.

Ray’s colorful abstractions represent a contemporary California design sensibility shaped partly by the Bay Area’s creative environment. Aguilar’s photographs, meanwhile, draw attention to communities and traditions with histories extending far beyond California’s modern cultural institutions.

Their artistic methods are also dramatically different.

Ray worked with abstraction, shape, pattern and color, while Aguilar used photography to document recognizable people, places and experiences. Yet both bodies of work demonstrate how California can be interpreted through highly personal artistic perspectives.

For museum visitors, that variety provides an opportunity to consider how art communicates identity, place and memory without requiring every artist to use the same visual language.

Museums as Spaces for Participation

Saturday’s opening celebration also demonstrates how museums increasingly combine traditional exhibitions with participatory experiences.

Rather than asking visitors only to walk through galleries, the Monterey Museum of Art is incorporating hands-on creative activity into the opening day.

Interactive programming can make museums more accessible, particularly for families and people who may not regularly visit art institutions. Creating a screenprint inspired by an exhibition, for example, can encourage visitors to examine artistic techniques more closely.

The museum also scheduled an early members-only viewing period before opening the galleries to the wider public for the free celebration.

Making the main opening event free provides another opportunity to broaden access to the arts. Admission costs can sometimes discourage casual visitors, while community opening days offer residents and travelers a chance to experience exhibitions without making a financial commitment.

A Cultural Destination on the Central Coast

The Monterey Museum of Art occupies an important position within the Central Coast’s cultural landscape.

Monterey is internationally recognized for its coastline, marine environment and tourism, but the region also has a long artistic history influenced by its scenery and diverse communities.

Exhibitions centered on California artists help connect that history with contemporary audiences.

The Fall 2026 opening is particularly suited to that mission because its featured artists provide different ways of looking at the state. Ray’s work highlights California’s modern creative culture, while Aguilar’s photography draws attention to Native communities whose histories are fundamental to understanding the region.

As the new season begins September 12, the Monterey Museum of Art is offering more than two collections of artwork. Its fall program invites visitors to consider how California’s identity can be expressed through color, photography, cultural memory and individual artistic experience.

For residents and visitors exploring Monterey this fall, the exhibitions provide another reason to look beyond the Central Coast’s famous scenery and discover the creative stories preserved inside its cultural institutions.