Hector René Membreño-Canales in Looking for America

Hector René Membreño-Canales, Mapa de Rutas Comerciales (Commercial Trade Route Maps), 2025, Photomontage, 37 × 35 in. Image courtesy the artist. © Hector René Membreño-Canales
Hector René Membreño-Canales, Mapa de Rutas Comerciales (Commercial Trade Route Maps), 2025, Photomontage, 37 × 35 in. Image courtesy the artist. © Hector René Membreño-Canales

Looking for America
Ongunquit Museum of American Art (OMAA)
April 10 – July 19, 2026

Looking for America brings together Hank Willis Thomas and artists who have worked alongside him, highlighting the power of creative communities—artists lifting one another up, sharing visual languages, and generating new meaning through collaboration. Their works engage history, memory, and culture to pose the exhibition’s central question: What does it mean to look for America, and whose America are we seeking? Looking for America suggests that America is not a fixed destination but an ongoing search—one that becomes collective, reflective, and, through these intertwined practices, joyously generative.

ACT lecturer Hector René Membreño-Canales is one of the artist featured in the exhibition.

The exhibition includes Membreño-Canales’s piece, Mapa de Rutas Comerciales (Commercial Trade Route Maps), which was first shown in the ACT Gallery during his show, Golden Cargo: Conquest of the Tropics. This exhibition occurred during Artfinity, and was generously funded through the Arts at MIT and a HASS grant. Golden Cargo: Conquest of the Tropics examines the complex history of the United Fruit Company (UFC), a global banana exporter with deep ties to US foreign policy, The Caribbean, Boston, and MIT.

Membreño-Canales is also participating in a panel discussion  on May 21 from 3-5PM.

ABOUT OGUNQUIT MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART (OMAA)  

Opened in 1953, OMAA was founded by the artist Henry Strater. The museum shares close historic and geographic ties to one of the earliest modern arts communities in the United States. OMAA houses a permanent collection of paintings, sculpture, drawings, prints, and photographs from the late 1800s to the present.

The museum showcases American art by mounting modern and contemporary exhibitions and accompanying educational programming and events. OMAA sits on approximately three acres of gardens right on the water with stunning panoramic views of Maine’s iconic coves and outcroppings. The museum is open for the 2026 season from April 10 through November 15. For more information, visit ogunquitmuseum.org.

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