In 2023, Laguna Art Museum's Art + Nature commission was Cristopher Cichocki's "Rising Inversion," a light painting on the sand along the hillside at Main Beach Park. Its phosphorescent surface gave off a turquoise glow. In 2024 the beach hosted "Ocean Ions," a dance piece by Christian Sampson and the Volta Collective that drew hundreds of people. For 2025, the Daily Pilot reported that the museum planned to have 800 volunteers use Ana Teresa Fernández's mirrored artwork to form shapes at Main Beach.
Each of those was built around one moment, one evening or one gathering. The 2026 commission works differently. Kim Manfredi's "A Flag Walk for Our Future" runs Thursday, November 5 through Monday, November 9, from 8:45 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. each day. It's laid out along a 0.7-mile accessible route from Main Beach through Heisler Park, and admission is free. The flags show a full 24-hour day, but you can only see them in daylight, on a path many Village residents already walk. This year's Art + Nature is made to be walked more than once.
A Full Day Laid Along 0.7 Miles
The installation has four clusters of four flags each. All of them are hand-painted and hand-gilded, and each cluster stands for a time of day: Dawn, Day, Dusk or Night. In every group the flags step down in height, from 18 feet to 9 feet. The Daily Pilot described the sequence as a nod to surfboards stacked along the shore.
On the museum's Art + Nature page, the colors change from one station to the next. Dawn uses the warm greys of a marine-layer morning. Day is bright midday color, Dusk is rosy jewel tones and Night is deep nocturnal hues. The flags also carry abstract symbols from Manfredi's painting vocabulary: air, water, leaf, web, cloud, glint and light.
When the city approved the project this summer, the Daily Pilot listed these proposed flag sites:
- The Main Beach boardwalk
- The Heisler Park gazebo
- The upper amphitheater area in Heisler Park
- Diver's Cove
Those were planned locations, so check the route maps available at the museum and at each installation site. The piece also went through the standard city review: the arts commission saw it on April 27, and the City Council approved it on its consent calendar on June 23.
The Night Flags Come Down at 4:30
The Night cluster is only up during the day. Because the installation keeps an 8:45 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. schedule, the flags never show their times of day under the actual conditions they depict. Each station works as a comparison: real coastal light falls on a painted version of a different hour.
The museum says this is the point. Its release says the changing light, wind and atmosphere along the path become part of the experience, and that the flags shift in how they read as conditions change over the day. If you walk the route at 9 a.m. under a marine layer, the grey Dawn flags will look like their surroundings. On a clear afternoon closer to 4, the same grey flags will look out of place. Manfredi puts her aim this way on the museum's Art + Nature page:
"My work aims to slow perception and create space for reflection. I see the handmade as a vital human practice."
The same page frames the project around what Manfredi calls social agreements: the often-unspoken rules and pathways, including waterfront paths and wheelchair-accessible trails, that shape how people walk, pause and gather in public space. That's one reason the route is a path rather than a single spot on the sand. Heisler Park's accessible walkway is part of the piece.
One visit shows you the flags in one kind of light. Five days of daily hours let you see them under morning fog and again in clear afternoon light.
How the Week Is Built Around the Walk
The museum spreads its programming across the week instead of putting it all into one night. Free events cluster on Thursday evening and Saturday, and a guided walk runs every morning.
- Thursday, November 5. Celebration Week opens with Laguna Beach's First Thursdays Art Walk. From 5 to 6 p.m., the gallery showing Manfredi's "View with a Grain of Sand" is free. From 6 to 7 p.m., Manfredi talks about the Flag Walk. The talk is free, but seating is limited and you have to register in advance. Walk-ups get in only if seats remain, and the rest of the museum stays closed that evening.
- Every morning, November 5 through 9. Manfredi leads a free walk from 10 to 11 a.m., starting at Laguna Art Museum, 307 Cliff Drive. No reservation is needed.
- Saturday, November 7, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Free art activities for adults and families take over the public cobblestone area at Main Beach. They include a viewfinder project for framing details of the coastline, temporary mark-making, a DJ and complimentary food.
- Saturday, November 7, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Museum admission is free. That covers "View with a Grain of Sand," "Radiant Terrains: Elements of Light in Contemporary Art from the Permanent Collection" and the other galleries.
- Saturday, November 7, 6 p.m. Seismologist Dr. Lucy Jones gives the annual keynote at the museum, titled "The Science of Resilience: Earthquakes, Climate and the Tempo of Action." Tickets are $35 for members and $40 for nonmembers, and this is the week's only paid event on the published schedule.
Saturday is the day to do everything. You can take the 10 a.m. guided walk, stop at the cobblestone activities on your way back to Main Beach, see the galleries for free and come back for the keynote at 6. Jones is a research associate at Caltech's Seismological Laboratory, where she has worked since 1984. She founded the Dr. Lucy Jones Center for Science and Society and wrote "The Big Ones."
Before all of this, the week was introduced by a Kalachakra sand mandala. Venerable Thuptan Phuntsok and Venerable Kunchok Tenzin of Namgyal Monastery and Dharma Center built it in the museum's Steele Gallery from October 27 through 30, in partnership with the Phen-Dey Foundation. The dissolution ceremony and procession to the ocean followed on October 31. The museum ties the mandala's making and dispersal to Manfredi's interest in things that don't last.
When the commission was announced, Julie Perlin Lee, the museum's executive director, told the Daily Pilot why Manfredi was chosen:
"Kim Manfredi's work is both poetic and materially powerful, and we look forward to the way her project will connect our community to the landscape of Laguna Beach."
A Bigger Crowd for a Quieter Piece
The museum says it served a record 21,000 people during Art + Nature in 2025. That year's program, by the Daily Pilot's account, opened with an upcycled couture fashion show and a community block party the next day. The 2026 lineup skips both. It runs on daily hours, a morning walk and one Saturday of hands-on activities, so attendance spreads over five days instead of peaking on a single evening.
That affects how you get there. The city's non-summer trolley schedule has been running since September 8, 2026, and continues through June 25, 2027. The Coastal Route serves downtown every 20 to 30 minutes. It runs 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 7:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday, 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday and 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Sunday, according to the City of Laguna Beach trolley page. On Thursday, the Coastal Route stops at 6 p.m., right as Manfredi's talk begins, so plan another way home. On Saturday the trolley runs until 10 p.m., long after the 6 p.m. keynote starts.
You can also take part as a volunteer. Stu News Laguna reports that the museum needs volunteers for two-hour shifts at one of the four installations. Volunteers welcome visitors, explain the story behind the work and help look after the flags through the day. Sign-up details are on the museum's Art + Nature page.
After Monday, November 9, the flags come down. Inside, "View with a Grain of Sand," Manfredi's first solo museum exhibition, stays on view through January 18, 2027. The museum describes it as the gallery version of the walk, carrying the same ideas into painting.
We plan to walk the route more than once this week ourselves. If you'd like to talk about life near Heisler Park and Main Beach, or about owning a home a short walk from both, Team Laguna is glad to help. Contact Us whenever it suits you.
