In honor of Portuguese Heritage Month in June, the Tulare City Historical Museum is excited to announce its upcoming photography exhibit by Jackson Nichols, FESTA – A Celebration of Portuguese Faith and Culture. The collection of work will be on view in the museum’s Heritage Art Gallery from June 1 – July 1, with an opening reception scheduled for June 1 from 5-7pm.

These images are part of a project spanning 30 years of photographing Portuguese festas (from 1990 to 2021) in Northern California. Nichols started this as a favor to his wife, Dianna Fernandez-Nichols, a third-generation Portuguese and a native of the Mission San Jose District of Fremont. She had attended festas when she was young and was then writing her master's thesis in cultural anthropology on the festas as a form of cultural identity. Nichols helped her illustrate it with his photographs. They attended many festas around the San Francisco Bay Area and the Central Valley of California.

This fueled Nichols's ongoing fascination with the pageantry and ritual surrounding the events. He fell in love with Portuguese culture and is grateful for the many years he has been able to attend and document these events and for the friends he made along the way.

This event is free and open to the public.

For more information, contact us at [email protected] or 559-686-2074.