20 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY AUGUST 28-SEPTEMBER 3, 2025 www.montereycountynow.com With four exhibits, the Monterey Museum of Art puts Big Sur art and artists on display. By Agata Popęda One doesn’t have to be an artist to be moved by the landscape, be it the redwoods or the coastline. Maybe everyone who comes to Big Sur and looks at it for the first time becomes an artist, even if just for a minute. No wonder so many painters, writers, sculptors, etc. chose it as their home and studio to draw from this permanent source of pristine energy—art created by nature. This season, the Monterey Museum of Art puts a magnifying glass over the region that has been a refuge to some artists and a powerful source of inspiration to many others. Four exhibits will be on display, each focusing on a different aspect of Big Sur magic. “The mid-century as a time and Big Sur as a place was an important art historical and societal moment that continues to exert its creative influence today,” says Laurie Iwami, MMA’s communications director. A World Apart: Big Sur in the Mid-Century is the largest exhibition of four. (An essay adapted from the exhibit catalog on p. 21 by curator Wendy Van Wyck Good provides a comprehensive introduction to this world.) A Garden of Earthly Delights: Henry Miller’s Big Sur, curated by the Henry Miller Memorial Library’s executive director, Magnus Torén, is a gate to the social world of writer and watercolorist Henry Miller. (Read more in a conversation with Torén, another seeker in Big Sur and a fitting curator of Miller’s legacy, on p. 25.) The exhibit A Sense of Wonder: Photographs of Big Sur shows iconic Big Sur photography by Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Wynn Bullock and Henry Gilpin. It includes all black-and-white photography; most are landscapes. Finally, spilling over Big Sur boundaries, is Human | Nature: California Zen in Big Sur and the Bay Area, curated by David Keaton, an expert on post-war and abstract California expressionism. While only one of the artists, Sam Francis, lived locally (in Carmel), Arthur Monroe spent time in Big Sur; John Anderson visited Tassajara and the Esalen Institute; Bernice Bing had her first Esalen residency in 1967; and James Suzuki exhibited at Henry Miller Library. A Garden of Earthly Delights opens Friday, Aug. 29-Nov. 16. A Sense of Wonder Sept. 11-Jan. 18. A World Apart Sept. 11-Nov. 30. Human | Nature Sept. 18-Jan. 25. Monterey Museum of Art, 559 Pacific St., Monterey. Open 11am-5pm Thursday-Sunday. $15; free/students, military, youth 18 and under. 372-5477, montereyart.org. Place BASED COURTESY OF THE HENRY MILLER MEMORIAL LIBRARY
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