Dezember/Cunningham Gallery
January 29, 2026 – August 29, 2026

The Invented Land offers an immersive exploration of transformation in California’s San Joaquin Valley, where land, water, and human ambition are inseparably linked. Drawing from her multigenerational connection to California agriculture, Ann Diener weaves drawing, sculpture, and installation into layered visual systems that reflect irrigation, infrastructure, and environmental change. Expanding on earlier iterations, this presentation introduces new works inspired by the Kern River, examining its vital role in shaping the region’s ecology, industry, and cultural memory. Maps, diagrams, and organic forms converge to trace cycles of cultivation, extraction, and renewal, revealing place as an ever-evolving construction shaped by memory, labor, and invention. 

Ablin Gallery
January 29, 2026 – May 2, 2026 

Shaped by her upbringing in Bakersfield, Ali Vaughan’s The Afterlife of Rivers and Fields explores how landscapes hold memory long after their surfaces change. Drawing from the Central Valley’s rivers, fields, and evolving terrain, Vaughan creates richly layered abstractions that register time through texture, gesture, and material. Her process embraces slowness and revision, allowing each work to emerge as a record of transformation rather than depiction. In Vaughan’s hands, place becomes an emotional and physical amalgam, shaped by history, sensation, and renewal. The exhibition offers a luminous reflection on how environments continue to speak through what remains.

Ann Katherine Brown Gallery
March 26, 2026 – March 6, 2027

Seventy Years of Inspiration: The Story of the Bakersfield Museum of Art traces the museum’s evolution from its founding in 1956 as the Cunningham Memorial Art Gallery to its role today as a regional cultural anchor. Through archival photographs, exhibition histories, and key moments in the museum’s growth, this visual history exhibition celebrates seven decades of creativity, community engagement, and artistic advocacy. It honors the artists, supporters, and audiences who have shaped BMoA’s legacy while looking toward its future as a place of inspiration and connection.