Beyond Museums: Pao Houa Her Exhibitions in Community

“I sort of took over the town…There’s a confrontation that happens whether you want it or not. I really like these moments of thoughtful intervention and chance encounters that feel accessible to everybody,” shares Pao Houa Her with Lisa Wong Macabasco, for Vogue.  

Macabasco delves into Her’s practice as experienced through two major concurrent surveys within and beyond museums: Pao Houa Her: The Imaginative Landscape at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, and at the San José Museum of Art in California.

“For two decades, Her has reflected on longing, homeland, and artifice through a personal lens, grounded in her own Hmong American experience while engaging with American landscape photography, colonial studio portraiture, and Hmong vernacular photography,” Macabasco writes. She examines how both exhibitions honor Her’s commitment to showing work within community. In Sheboygan, selections from series such as My Mother’s Flowers and After the Fall of Hmong Teb Chaw now hang in the Hmong Mutual Assistance Association and an active courtroom. In San José, Her’s imagery appears via wheat-pasted posters and digital billboards, while the museum itself hosts a more traditional presentation of her work.

Reflecting on a historical lack of welcome, accessibility, and representation in museum spaces, Her states, “That has always been at the forefront of my thinking: How can I say my work is for the Hmong community if I’m not showing in Hmong spaces?”

Pao Houa Her: The Imaginative Landscape is co-organized by the John Michael Kohler Arts Center and the San José Museum of Art. The exhibition at JMKAC remains on view through August 31, 2025, while the presentation of offsite works throughout Sheboygan will be installed through February 22, 2026. The SJMA presentation also remains on view through February 22.