by Angeera Khadka
How do we stretch our ways of working and imagine new processes? What possibilities lie in opening our work to external collaborators and co-creating an exhibition together?
Born of the Bear Dance: Dugan Aguilar’s Photographs of Native California (November 2024–July 2025) was a co-created exhibition at the Oakland Museum of California (OMCA). While not all OMCA exhibitions are co-created, this project, about the work and legacy of Native California photographer Dugan Aguilar (Mountain Maidu/Pit River/Walker River Paiute), could not have been imagined any other way.
The project brought together five Native collaborators: Dustin Aguilar (Maidu, Pit River, Paiute), Jennifer Bates (Northern Sierra Miwok), Theresa Harlan (Kewa Pueblo and Jemez Pueblo), Chag Lowry (Yurok, Maidu, Achumawi), and Rico Miranda (Rumsen Ohlone). The exhibition team structure at OMCA is inherently collaborative in its approach to exhibition development, with interpretation and design joining the ideation and iteration process early. This project pushed the collaborative work further and acknowledged not only the museum’s commitment to foster deep connections with the Native California community, but also the need to have Native voices present when sharing stories related to Indigenous communities.
Opening Internal Processes for Collaborative Work
From the start, it was clear that the collaborators’ expertise, as family, colleagues, and contemporaries of Aguilar, would fundamentally shape the exhibition. Their insights challenged assumptions and refined decisions about interpretation and object groupings.
Almost all collaborators spoke of Aguilar’s process, which was embedded in his Indigenous heritage. He led his work and held the relationship with those he photographed with a sense of gratitude and reciprocity. He often gifted those he photographed the image he created. It felt important to introduce this concept early at the exhibition entrance. Visitors were greeted with an image of Dugan Aguilar standing with a number of those he photographed holding their own images in hand. This image was paired with beaded feathers, gifts Aguilar received in return.
Installation images of the entryway experience.
This sense of gratitude and reciprocity continued for the exhibition team into the relationships we built with the Native collaborators during the exhibition development process. Monthly meetings not only informed exhibition development but also a simultaneous cataloging project, programming, and marketing. Clarity in expectations, openness to feedback, and willingness to re-think our processes helped build trust and establish new relationships. These relationships continue beyond the exhibition.
Exhibition Experience that is Reflective of the Communities Represented
Typically, exhibition labels are written by Curators and Experience Developers with review by external partners or artists. For this project, we tried something different. Draft texts were shared with collaborators for developmental editing and revision, ensuring that the language reflected Native perspectives. This shift required vulnerability and flexibility from the museum team. It also resulted in interpretation that was reflective of and accountable to the communities represented.
One of the key lessons of the project emerged through Aguilar’s landscape photographs. These images were not simply scenic views; they represented generations of relationship, memory, and belonging. As one collaborator noted, “As Native people, we are the land.”
This realization prompted a key design and interpretive question: how could we convey the ancestral connections held in these photographs to visitors?
The solution was to pair landscape images with recorded oral histories. For example, Dustin Aguilar (Maidu, Pit River, Paiute) read the Maidu creation story that incorporates the important landmark, Chuchuyam, featured in an Aguilar photograph. This newly recorded audio was available for visitors to hear alongside this image.
What We Learned
This project reaffirmed that co-creation is not just a methodology, it’s a relationship. Fostering on-going deep partnerships with the communities with whom museums want to work allows for richer storytelling and builds trust beyond just one-off projects. Leading with gratitude and reciprocity shaped not only the exhibition but also how we moved through the work together. Existing relationships with Native communities, like OMCA’s decades-long work with a Native Advisory Council, helped us establish this work. However, trust still had to be earned through process, transparency, and care.
Stretching the way we work within museums and shifting our processes to allow for collaboration fosters creativity. At OMCA, the result of this flexibility was an exhibition that resonated with visitors, and challenged us to reassess our assumptions about how we convey stories to our visitors.
Acknowledging the work of many other OMCA colleagues who supported these relationships and made this work possible including Drew Johnson, Curator of Photography & Visual Culture; Craig Hanson, Designer; Rocky Aguirre, Project Manager; and Meredith Patute, Registrar.
Angeera Khadka
Angeera Khadka is an Experience Developer at the Oakland Museum of California where she works closely with curators and designers to produce visitor-centered experiences and interpretation. She serves as the Secretary for the Board of Directors run organization, Cultural Connections. In 2025, she served as Adjunct Faculty at University of San Francisco. Her past work has included exhibition development, curatorial research, and collections work at various institutions like Presidio Trust, Exhibit Envoy, and Childs Gallery. Khadka holds an MA in Museum Studies from University of San Francisco and a B.A. in History of Art and Architecture from Boston University.