The Art and Architecture of Maybe @ Montalvo Arts Center

Visitors can explore seven works installed on the grounds of Montalvo from 8 am to sunset. An additional four installations will be on view inside the Cottage Gallery, Thursday through Sunday from 11 am to 3 pm, or by appointment. The Cottage Gallery is located next to Parking Lot 2.

The Art & Architecture of Maybe, Montalvo’s 2026 Marcus Exhibition, examines the role that art, when integrated with architectural elements and sensibilities, can have in building community. While art is an act of personal communication, architecture is explicitly committed to connecting people to each other and the landscape. At the intersection of these two disciplines, the horizon line of magical thinking becomes visible. 

The thirteen contemporary artists featured in this exhibition are actively engaged in this social experiment by encouraging us to see and move from/through/around our immediate worlds, environments, and homes. Their work consists of clever portals and whimsical structures. Their materials of expression include wood, metal, glass, fabric, and video. Equally intentional is their use of built forms that play with light, shadow, color, transparency, void, and mass to encourage viewers to enter physically and emotionally into these “spaces” and engage with the works.  

Two wildly different installations– one by this year’s Marcus Prize Winner, Lead Pencil Studio, an artist collective led by Annie Han and Daniel Mihalyo, and the other by Rebeca Méndez— challenge us to reconsider existing landscapes through an artist’s perspective. Lead Pencil Studio’s Double Vision: Doorway is deliberately sited in the Italianate Garden, a formal garden that exists at the base of a sweeping hill that begins at Montalvo’s historic villa. Providing a bold visual counterpoint to the villa and the nearby Love Temple, it dares us to approach Montalvo’s formal grounds with a critical eye. Rebeca Méndez’s immersive video in the Cottage Gallery plunges us into a wholly different world— one devoid of built structures. When viewed through her stark and minimalist lens, assumptions about a land’s origins and subsequent claims to it are upended.  

Other artworks installed throughout Montalvo’s grounds consist of structures that blend the language of contemporary art with motifs rooted in everyday, functional architecture to envision new spaces for community gatherings. These include Edra Soto‘s rooms constructed of screens alluding to Puerto Rican vernacular architecture, Viviana Paredes‘ glass house made of repurposed tequila bottles, and Taro Hattori‘s spare and elegant wooden teahouse and endai benches. These are structures rooted in specific cultural histories, socio-economic representation, and provide commentary on sustainability. Visitors are invited to engage with these works through contemplation, meditation, movement, performance, or social gatherings.

Also on display are whimsical and fantastical structures that embody collective future dreaming, world-building, and even playful rebellion. Robin Lasser, Adrienne Pao, and Sasha Vermel, present a winged dress tent and a newly planted native garden, while Cameron Hockenson’s site-specific bird houses underscore the theme of biocultural diversity within a formal landscape setting.  

Inside the Cottage Gallery, architectural models by Terry Berlier, Lee Mingwei imagine daring perspectives and radical views of Montalvo’s woodlands. Conceptual artist Tony May‘s follies and a project built by Andre Woodward and the children who attended this summer’s fort-making camp, bring contrasting generational perspectives to works rooted in creativity and grounded in play.

This exhibition explores community-building at the intersection of art and architecture. It challenges us to look at our habitats and immediate environment through artists’ perspectives, invites visitors to approach these spaces on their own terms, and encourages us to dream, play, and engage with a world that is filled with infinite possibilities.

Curators of the exhibition: Judy Koong Dennis, Assistant Curator and Program Manager, and Kelly Sicat, Director of the Lucas Artists Program