OSU Exhibition History: 1975-79, Kelsey Wagner with Louise Siddons

In Fall 2020, students led by Associate Professor Louise Siddons created a digital project documenting the art exhibition history of Oklahoma State University, with the assistance of Digital Scholarship Librarian Megan Macken. Students used the digitized archive of the student newspaper, the Daily O’Collegian—today the O’Colly— to construct a database of exhibitions held between 1960 and 1999.

Here on the collection blog, we’re featuring reflective essays written by students about their work on this project, based on the research they did to compile the online exhibition history. This week’s essay is by Kelsey Wagner. It has been edited for length and clarity, and I’ve also taken the liberty of adding some new research to Kelsey’s work — hence the shared byline.

The most common exhibition type between 1975 and 1979 featured faculty and student artwork. However, when compared with the previous years in the online exhibition history, we see a new theme emerging of female artwork being recognized. The trend seemed to have happened overnight, as starting in the early 1970s there was an abundance of female work being displayed. When compared to the exhibitions of the 1960s, this shift is very noticeable. Throughout the 1970s, one can see the growing trend of gender equality.

This was probably in response to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. In 1925, art critic Wayne Craven remarked that painting is “essentially a man’s art, and …in the entire range of art there is not a single picture entitled to a movement’s consideration that has been done by a woman” (quoted in Miller et al, American Encounters,2008: 564-65). One can see how society’s attitude toward female artists changed during the course of a couple of decades.

Throughout American history, there have been several periods of large-scale social movements concerning feminism. In the 1910s, women were fighting for the right to vote. Fifty years later, during the 1960s, another wave of feminism was on the rise. This wave continued into the 1970s. During this time more and more women were going to work, having fewer children and were generally gaining more personal freedoms. Given that many of the OSU students during the 1970s grew up during this turbulent time, it is possible that it shaped them to think more progressively. These students were not as constricted as their predecessors were, and therefore the tone of this generation was more accepting of the feminist movement.

Geneva Wise, 1975 (source: The Daily O’Collegian).

In the O’Colly article, “Local Resident Opens Show,” we are introduced to Geneva H. Wise, a graduate of Oklahoma State. Wise, pictured here, had an impressive list of awards and shows under her belt before taking up this exhibition. She was an art student at OSU during the 1950s, which, as mentioned before, was not a great time for women artists, as they were critiqued for not being “coarse, earthy and intolerable,” as Craven had imagined a male artist should be. However, Wise graduated from the university and went on to have a successful career. Work in this exhibition, held from November 13-25, 1975, included acrylic, oils and watercolor.

While there is not much commentary on the event itself, one can imagine how the public might have responded to the show. For example, the article in the O’Colly paints Wise in great warmth as a person and also highlights her achievements. This was possibly done to make the audience not feel intimidated by her while also giving her a sense of credibility as a female artist.

From June 13-24, 1977, an exhibition of women faculty’s art was sponsored by the art department with help from the “Women in the Spotlight” program. It was held in the Georgian Lounge of the Student Union, and sponsored by the Student Union Activities Board. The show was comprised of colorful pieces of artwork from the women faculty at Oklahoma State University, including Ellen Murray Meissinger, Cynthia Huff Parks and Marlene Collins Walker. Unlike other exhibitions documented during this time period, most of the paintings were for sale, ranging from $65 to $650.

The women faculty exhibition was sponsored with help from the “Women in the Spotlight” program. This program was “a series of courses oriented to women” that was offered in the summer of 1977. According to Dr. Shaila Aery, coordinator of the program, “The 15 courses are designed to meet the needs of women in today’s society. The problems a woman faces today are very different from those faced by a man.” She was blunt about details: “According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average college educated woman makes a salary equivalent to that of a man with an 8^th grade education.” This program aimed to help women achieve a higher social status during this wave of feminism. And since the event was also sponsored by the Art Department, one can assume that the show was well accepted by faculty. However, given the climate of the day, was there some hesitation by older members of the community, who did not think that women ought to be artists? With no record of the attitudes of the community, it is difficult to speculate on this topic.

While there was representation of female artists at Oklahoma State during this time period, something that lacks is representation of other groups of people. For example, having an artist community comprised of LGBTQ+ members today would be a worthwhile exhibition to see. We are in yet another wave of Civil Rights today where the LGBTQ+ community is fighting for their rights and furthered freedoms, like that of the women’s movement in the 1960s and 1970s. Only in 2015 was same-sex marriage legalized in the United States, and that is still being debated. Transgender and non-binary members of the community are also underrepresented. So, like the support of the Art Department during the feminist movement, one might propose an exhibition featuring the work of queer artists. Oklahoma State now has the opportunity to support another minority community during a time for social change.

OSU Exhibition History: 1965-69, Katherine Kurtz

Oklahoma State University began collecting art in the 1920s, and had been teaching art and architecture even earlier. From the beginning, exhibitions were a key component of the university’s land grant mission, sharing faculty and student research, as well as the work of artists from beyond campus, with both campus and community audiences. Exhibition organizers often invited artists to campus, enriching the campus with participatory programs and lectures. 

In Fall 2020, students led by Associate Professor Louise Siddons created a digital project documenting the art exhibition history of Oklahoma State University, with the assistance of Digital Scholarship Librarian Megan Macken, who built the database underpinning the site and ran virtual training workshops. Students used the digitized archive of the student newspaper, the Daily O’Collegian—today the O’Colly— to construct a database of exhibitions held between 1960 and 1999. Each entry includes a link to the archival source, as well as a description of the exhibition and records for people—artists, organizers, and more—associated with the exhibition. The database that the students built also documents exhibition locations, helping us build a better understanding of how and where art has appeared on and off campus over the course of the institution’s history.

Here on the collection blog, we’re featuring reflective essays written by students about their work on this project, based on the research they did to compile the online exhibition history. This week’s essay is by Katherine Kurtz. It has been edited for length and clarity, but its content has not been altered.

My group was in charge of the period from 1965 through 1969. Exhibitions during these years shared a common theme of expanding knowledge. For example, we can see this goal being met by a Chinese Art Display that displayed scrolls, an Art Therapy exhibition on the help art therapy can give psychiatric patients_, and a Tea Ceramics Display demonstrating the Japanese style of pottery called raku.

Throughout the exhibitions the organizers are the students of OSU’s art program, their faculty, or the OSU art department themselves organizing the displays or exhibitions. Different audiences acted differently: for the Art Therapy exhibition, for example, the Daily O’Collegian reported that many people attended, and interviewed one of the doctors who worked with the art therapy program at the Tulsa Children’s Hospital. The articles on the Chinese Art Display, meanwhile, did not reference the turnout but talked about Dr. Li, who organized the exhibition’s lecture on the subject matter of the scrolls. The audience was also not talked about in relation to the Tea Ceramics, but the O’Colly reporter talked a lot about the style of pottery being made and the artist who made the ceramic pieces.

In its coverage of the Tea Ceramics and the Chinese Art, the O’Collegian talked about Asian culture and their styles of doing things. The Tea Ceramics display covered a type of Japanese style of pottery called raku which was mainly involved in the Japanese tea ceremonies and, according to the O’Collegian reporting, showed the potter’s alignment with nature and their spirit, and the Chinese Art display showed Chinese art scrolls that are done in an abstract manner but with a traditional medium on a Chinese scroll. Both articles in the O’Collegian were primarily informational, with not much feeling of excitement put into each article. But Americans have grown an interest in Asian culture, and it has influenced things like the use of herbal medicine, anime, and Chinese restaurants have grown in increasingly popular demand around the United States, so it seems likely that people would have been interested in going to these exhibitions out of their desire for more knowledge of Asian culture.

The Art Therapy Exhibition was huge for 1966 in my personal opinion, because today in our culture it is still so hard to talk about mental health and what is beneficial and what is not. Mental health awareness is being pushed in our society, especially in the times we are in with quarantine, because not everyone knows the signs of what a mental health crisis looks like and what true depression looks like. People usually want to help other people, and when new therapy came out to help psychiatric patients, people wanted to see if it truly did help. With art therapy, people got the first glimpses into what mental health illnesses look like if they had never been mentally ill themselves¹. This treatment of art therapy is still used today to help “explore emotions, develop self-awareness, cope with stress, boost self-esteem, and work on social skills.” This shows how far we have come from that exhibition in 1966: from showing that it worked to being used in everyday practice. The O’Collegian‘s feelings on it were excited and informative; this shows that they wanted people to know about the subject as well as showing how cool the experience of looking at all the pieces of art was.

With my group being in charge of cataloging 1965 through 1969, I learned a lot about different art displays and exhibitions that took place at OSU in that time period. This was an experience that was super fun, and I was glad I could be a part of it.

Further reading:

“Shatter the Silence and Seize The Awkward.” Seize the Awkward. American Foundation For Suicided Prevention, 2020. https://seizetheawkward.org/. 

Cherry, Kendra. “How Does Art Therapy Work for Patients?” Verywell Mind, May 11, 2020. https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-art-therapy-2795755. 

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OSU Exhibition History: 1965-69, Brooks Carsins

Oklahoma State University began collecting art in the 1920s, and had been teaching art and architecture even earlier. From the beginning, exhibitions were a key component of the university’s land grant mission, sharing faculty and student research, as well as the work of artists from beyond campus, with both campus and community audiences. Exhibition organizers often invited artists to campus, enriching the campus with participatory programs and lectures. 

In Fall 2020, students led by Associate Professor Louise Siddons created a digital project documenting the art exhibition history of Oklahoma State University, with the assistance of Digital Scholarship Librarian Megan Macken, who built the database underpinning the site and ran virtual training workshops. Students used the digitized archive of the student newspaper, the Daily O’Collegian—today the O’Colly— to construct a database of exhibitions held between 1960 and 1999. Each entry includes a link to the archival source, as well as a description of the exhibition and records for people—artists, organizers, and more—associated with the exhibition. The database that the students built also documents exhibition locations, helping us build a better understanding of how and where art has appeared on and off campus over the course of the institution’s history. Check out the OSU Exhibition History site here.

Over the next few weeks, the collection blog will feature reflective essays written by students about their work on this project, based on the research they did to compile the online exhibition history. This week’s essay is by Brooks Carsins. It has been edited for length and clarity, but its content has not been altered.

From 1965 to 1969, OSU held a number of art exhibitions around campus. They were of varying subject matter, with themes like pottery, paintings, or sculpture, or focuses on specific artists or groups of individuals like students or Native Americans. Overall, there weren’t any substantial interconnecting themes between exhibitions. The majority of the time, faculty did the organization or can be expected to have done it in the event that it wasn’t stated who put the exhibition together. In their coverage of exhibitions, some writers for the Daily O’Collegian offered a critique of the art exhibitions and specific works, but most offered just basic information like which artists were in it and when it ended.

 The final exhibition of the 1968-69 season, held in late July 1969, consisted of art from 20 different Native American tribes from over the past 70 or so years at the time. The exhibition was significant in terms of the twentieth century’s American history, considering what an integral part Native peoples have played in the history of the development of the US. The late 1960s saw Native American rights activism, including a seizure of the prison on Alcatraz Island in November 1969 as a political statement, but there aren’t direct connections between those movements and the exhibition within the O’Colly.

The Daily O’Collegian article “Black Paintings on Exhibit” describes an exhibition composed entirely of Black artists to commemorate Black Heritage Week of February 1969, an event also observed by OSU that year. 1969 was also the year of the first substantial push for Black History Month observance in the US by Kent State University before it started officially observing the event the following year, so it may have been especially significant at the time in that regard. The 1960s were also characterized by race tensions, like the Greensboro sit-ins of 1960 or the 1967 Newark riots, so it’s possible this exhibition focusing on the art of Black Americans was perhaps prompted in response to that, given the nature of art to comment on current events in the life of the artist. In a follow-up article on Black Heritage Week, the 1965 Watts riots are specifically mentioned as being significant for Black movements at the time, which supports the possibility that the exhibition, or the art in it, was influenced by the tensions of the time.

Throughout the late 1960s, we see an attempt in the art exhibitions at OSU to specifically represent certain racial demographics of artists, with aforementioned exhibitions focusing on all Black artists for Black Heritage Week in February 1969 or the Native American art exhibition. This may have been in response to previously described race tensions of the time, or it could have been an otherwise unrelated attempt at being more inclusive of those demographics. Since a portion of what makes American art history is dedication to preserving or commenting on current events of the time, it’s surprising to me that there is little in the O’Colly archives referencing the Vietnam War in art exhibitions for the time span. 1965-69 was a significant span of time for the war, representing the period after Kennedy’s assassination when Lyndon B. Johnson escalated the conflict with notable events like the Operation Rolling Thunder bombing campaign from 1965 to 1968. Throughout the many O’Colly pages I skimmed while looking through the archives for exhibitions, I only made one mental note of a mention of the Vietnam war in the paper in relation to some action President Nixon had taken in 1969. Given the highly controversial nature of the war in the US, as well as how iconic it was from a visual standpoint, I would have expected it to have been heavily explored and commented on by artists of the time, but this is not suggested by the archive.

A Vietnam-themed exhibition would still be relevant today, not only for its own historical significance but also the similarities between it and modern wars such as those in Afghanistan and other Middle Eastern conflicts in recent history. Many Vietnam veterans are still alive today who might appreciate the acknowledgement of the lives lost or impacted in the conflict, especially when at the time (and still today) poor public opinion of the war was sometimes reflected onto the soldiers as discrimination. Similarities between Vietnam and modern conflicts also make it still relevant in a different sense. In some ways Vietnam was the first modern war as we recognize it today, characterized by foreign militaries like the US training and arming locals and an increase in civilians turning armed combatants as well as shying away from conventional World War style conflicts on defined battlefields with obviously affiliated actors. As a result, I think it would resonate with people familiar or involved with these modern conflicts as well as it would with those from Vietnam itself.

Invited? A Student Review of “Invited,” at the OSU Museum of Art

Earlier this semester, I asked the students in my Art History Theory and Methods course to visit and review the current exhibition at the OSU Museum of Art, “Invited.” I also extended the show’s invitation to them—which artwork from the permanent collection, I asked, would they have chosen to include in the exhibition? Over the course of the next few weeks, I’ll share their thoughts: first, their collaborative review of the show as it is, and then each of their additional objects.

This month the Oklahoma State University Museum of Art is celebrating its five-year anniversary with an exhibition curated by a selection of contributors essential to its existence. These individuals were invited (har-har) to select works from the permanent collection of the University; the goal of this exhibition was to honor the major contributors to the OSUMA and showcase the University’s permanent collection.

The heart of the exhibition uses a method of artwork selection rooted in communal activity. By inviting individuals who operate in the periphery of the museum to help design an exhibition, the museum is effectively showing that it is positioned to reflect its community.

This unique, yet fun and intellectually evocative form of interactivity highlights that the OSUMA values and thrives off the people who support it. An exhibition designed by the museum’s supporters also underscores the prominence and importance of these patrons, who often go underexposed.

Donors are one of the factors that enable the museum to serve the community with such dedication. Invited illustrates this community service and highlights the donors, board members, and trustees of the museum by allowing them to participate. This exhibition is made of carefully chosen pieces from the University’s permanent collection.

Also, by utilizing this collection, the museum gives the guest curators a view into how their contributions are helping the Oklahoma State and Stillwater communities. The position of guest curator allows these individuals to take an active part in the museum rather than being a name on a thank you list.

The guest curators brought in by the museum have different levels of art education and each have their own interests, and this has resulted in a diverse multimedia exhibition for the museum guests to enjoy. The exhibition features sculpture, furniture, paintings, and jewelry, giving visitors a small glimpse into the massive collection currently maintained by the University. This variety in the exhibition appeals to the larger diverse community that is the population of Stillwater.

By collecting guest curators from different walks of life, visitors to the exhibition are able to see differing points of view on what others would consider ‘good art’. For example, a guest curator with an affinity for Native American art might find the works of Benjamin Harjo Jr. particularly compelling, while another might have a passion for photography. This is smart on the part of the museum since the larger the assortment of items, the more likely it is that a viewer will find one that they can relate to personally.

The labels are designed in a clear manner that successfully accommodates the unique curation of the exhibition. They indicate the basic information of each work, allowing the viewer to explore and form their own ideas and opinions while also providing an accessory to the exhibition literature; a stack of booklets can be found on the bench in the center of the gallery.

There is, however, a lack of clarity concerning the organization in the gallery. Why were the works hung the way they were? What level of agency did the guest curators have?

Firstly, the works are arranged in a typical white cube-esque hanging, which is uninviting to many people not familiar with art or art spaces. Even a relatively seasoned museum goer might feel somewhat uncomfortable not knowing where to start, what work to approach first, or what direction to take.

Secondly, why does the exhibition branch out into the next room, the Art Lab? The two spaces clash and perpetuates the feeling of not knowing where to go, or if one is even welcome to go into that space.

The exhibition is called Invited, which prompts the idea that any group of people could’ve been “invited” to contribute to the exhibition; however, in reality it is quite exclusive. We are given no clear, outright explanation of who the guest curators are, and why they were chosen. Why wasn’t the museum staff invited, for example? Their input might have been highly relevant to the final look of this exhibition. Elaborating on this problem of exclusivity, it’s ironic how an exhibition which calls for inclusion in its very name can seem so uninviting. Who decided who to invite?

The OSUMA is an invaluable resource to the community of Stillwater; beyond serving the university and acting as a home to its extensive permanent art collection, the museum serves the local population of Stillwater by providing a free and public art space. The Museum also provides educational resources in the form of the Art Lab, largely funded by donors such as George R. Kravis II.

The purpose of Invited is to showcase the breadth and depth of the OSU Museum of Art’s collection, but does it do so successfully? The collection has grown from 800 to 5,000 objects since 2010, an amazing feat! In the show colorful, geometric, abstract works are certainly well represented, but there are marked absences when one considers the range of the collection.

Art of the ancient world is missing, as well as Asian and African art. As Dr. Louise Siddons explains in her introduction to the Museum catalogue, Sharing a Journey: Building the Oklahoma State University Museum of Art Collection (2014), the collection’s strengths include American and British painting, works on paper, African art and design, and the material culture of the Mediterranean ancient world. However, the lack of diversity in geographic regions and variety in media represented in Invited would leave the average museum-goer, with no inside knowledge about the museum, unaware of the vast amount of African art, or the strong photography collection. Instead, one might believe that American painting and Native American art are all that the institution has to offer. While the show claims to represent the breadth of the OSUMA, what is on view is certainly not proportional to the overall collection.

The layout of the show also leads to problems. The Native American art is largely separated from the main gallery space, and is placed in the Art Lab, in a corner, which leads to confusion about whether or not it is part of the show. Rather than feeling encouraged to wander the space freely, the viewer is left questioning the confines of the space, and the limits of their access. The difficult task of creating some cohesion amongst the varying pieces was approached through separating the Native American objects and landscape paintings from the bright, geometric pieces in the main gallery. While a rhythm of color in the two spaces helps create a sense of unity, the show feels disjointed overall. A possible solution might be to limit the exhibition to one room, so it’s clear to visitors what’s part of the show and what’s not. Further, a temporary wall could be installed to allow for a demarcation of the space and a division of the styles which makes sense. Invited seeks to create a diverse museum experience, but the different points of view create more confusion than clarity regarding the OSUMA’s permanent collection.

The exhibition Invited: Celebrating Five Years will be on view at the Oklahoma State University of Museum of Art until January 25, 2020.

— Dr. B J Bartlett

“Dr. B J Bartlett” is Landes Bauter, Lovisa Broberg, Hayla May, and Ariel Reimbold. BJ Smith was a faculty member in the Art Department at Oklahoma State who passed away in 2012; our seminar room in the Bartlett Center for the Visual Arts is dedicated to his memory. The students’ writing has been lightly edited for readability and length, but their content has not been altered.

The Southwest in Motion: Students Curating Native American Art, Part 2

Last week, I posted the first of this two-part series about the intrepid and dedicated group of students from my ART 4763/5763 History of Native American Art and Material Culture course who put together an exhibition for the OSU Museum of Art last spring. Volunteering to get involved above and beyond their coursework, these students—Roxanne Beason, Calli Heflin, Katelynn Pipestem, Chestiké Williams, and Amanda Zimmerman—experienced the challenge of curating Native American art from soup to nuts.

The resulting exhibition, “The Southwest in Motion: Navajo, Pueblo, and Hopi Paintings from the Charles Little Collection,” opened on June 11, 2019. The closing reception, featuring guest speakers Dr. Farina King and Myron Beeson, will be Thursday, September 5, from 5-7pm. The show will be on view through September 14, 2019. Last week and this week on the blog, I recap our curatorial process, inviting you behind the scenes.

Community Collaboration

Conversations about decolonization have taught us that Indigenous communities and voices should be prioritized in any museum exhibition involving their cultures—but although we had several Native students in the class, none identified culturally with the tribes represented in the exhibition. I wrote to my colleague at the Edmon Low Library, Julie Pearson-Little Thunder, to ask her for suggestions of local artists and historians who might be willing to help us out. Without a budget from the museum, I was initially asking for volunteers, which would not have been my preference, as it continues a pattern of institutional exploitation of marginalized voices. I began to explore alternative funding sources, but because our timeline was short, I initially reached out to people with the open admission that my students and I were dependent upon their goodwill and generosity.

The first person I spoke with was Dr. Farina King, a history professor at Northeastern State University. She was immediately enthusiastic about connecting with us, sharing her work and engaging thoughtfully with ours. Meanwhile, graduate student Roxanne Beason was in conversation with artist Myron Beeson, whose work is in the exhibition. He offered her insight into his painting, but also offered to come and share his knowledge and skill—both as an artist and as a traditional flute player—with museum visitors at the opening reception.

After we had put together a checklist and drafted exhibition labels, we sent our work to Dr. King in order to give her a sense of the exhibition’s direction. We met with her via Skype after class one afternoon, and I invited all the students in the class to participate in the conversation, whether or not they had volunteered for the exhibition. One of the students, Robert Streeter, observed afterwards that the conversation helped him connect what we learned in class about the history of Native people to the museum world. “We talked about the negative effects of colonialism and how to better show respect towards the Native American art in the exhibition,” he recalled, expressing appreciation for Dr. King’s interest in the project and the ideas she offered to students about connecting history and culture.

Research and Writing

Because we were all learning together, our research and writing was a group process. We met after class for up to three hours a week, sharing library books, bouncing ideas back and forth, and editing texts. Questions were raised: why is so much writing about Native American art about form rather than iconography? What information is appropriate to share with a general audience, and how have understandings of sacred and/or culturally private knowledge changed over time? How can we increase the number of Diné (Navajo), Hopi, and Pueblo perspectives that we’re bringing to bear on our research and writing through research as well as community engagement? How do we evaluate scholarly texts written twenty, forty, or eighty years ago?

Dr. Trever Lee Holland, Roxanne Beason, Chestiké Williams (obscured), Amanda Zimmerman, and Katelynn Pipestem work together on research and writing for “The Southwest in Motion.”

Dr. Trever Lee Holland and I took responsibility for writing the introductory text for the show, based on the students’ research. But before we could do that, we needed a title. For me, coming up with a title is the most difficult part of any curatorial process—but thanks to years of teaching, I’ve come up with a strategy for collaborative title-making that generates a high level of conceptual conversation, as well as a thoughtful approach to the poetics of phrasing.

Process board for devising an exhibition title.

Process board for devising an exhibition title.

Once we had a title with which we were all happy—“The Southwest in Motion”—Trever and I drafted the introductory text. We sent it to our third community consultant, professor Marwin Begaye, at the University of Oklahoma. His acute editorial comments helped us polish our language and clarify our intent in the essay, and reminded me that when it comes to any sort of writing, more eyes are always better.

Visitors to the Exhibition

“The Southwest in Motion” has had many visitors over the course of its run, but one group stood out for me. The OSU Museum’s Associate Curator of Education, Cat de Araújo, reported that the Oklahoma Future Native Leaders visited the exhibition, which served as the focal point of a two-hour program with 33 teens from across the state of Oklahoma. In a workshop that engaged the students’ bodies and poses with those depicted in the paintings, they discovered how movement and migration affect identity in their own lives as well as in the artworks and throughout history.

Closing Reception

Thanks to the generous support of American Studies at OSU, I was ultimately able to offer all three of our community consultants a modest honorarium in return for their help with “The Southwest in Motion”—but it is characteristic of our academic and artistic communities in Oklahoma that they all offered to collaborate without any expectation of compensation. I hope you will join us on September 5 to help celebrate the culmination of this wonderful exhibition, the students whose work made it possible, and the community that supported their learning experience.

 

The Southwest in Motion: Students Curating Native American Art

Over the summer, this blog  focused on the experiences of my students in ART 4813 Museum Exhibition / History of Photography—but at the same time that they were working hard as a class, an intrepid and dedicated group of students from my ART 4763/5763 History of Native American Art and Material Culture course were also putting together an exhibition for the OSU Museum of Art. Volunteering to get involved above and beyond their coursework, these students—Roxanne Beason, Calli Heflin, Katelynn Pipestem, Chestiké Williams, and Amanda Zimmerman—experienced the challenge of curating Native American art from soup to nuts.

The resulting exhibition, “The Southwest in Motion: Navajo, Pueblo, and Hopi Paintings from the Charles Little Collection,” opened on June 11, 2019. The closing reception, featuring guest speakers Dr. Farina King and Myron Beeson, will be Thursday, September 5, from 5-7pm. The show will be on view through September 14, 2019. This week and next week on the blog, I recap our curatorial process, inviting you behind the scenes. How were these students’ experiences different from those in the Museum Exhibition course?

Just after the Spring 2019 semester started, we were invited to curate an exhibition drawn from the Charles Little Collection, a recent gift to the OSU Museum of Art. The director of the Museum had reached out to Elizabeth Payne, director of the Center for Sovereign Nations at OSU, seeking students interested in curating an exhibition with a proposed opening date in June. Because I’m a faculty partner at the Center, Elizabeth knew that I was teaching Native American Art, so she passed the invitation on to me straight away. I, in turn, offered the opportunity to my students—and their enthusiasm was immediate!

I knew that we’d have to be disciplined in order to fit this unexpected opportunity into student (and faculty!) workloads that were already brimming over with coursework, jobs, and family commitments. My first step, therefore, was to enlist some help. I turned to Dr. Trever Lee Holland, then a visiting assistant professor in the English Department at OSU, whose expertise in 20^th-century Native American performance and literature, as well as his skill and experience teaching students writing and composition, were both assets I was eager to add to the project.* He, too, was intrigued by the opportunity to help students curate an exhibition.

Streamlining our approach to the collection

A former faculty member at OSU, Charles Little is eager for his collection to be of value to students. As with many large gifts, the collection is arriving at the museum in stages over time, so our registrar, Cindy Clark, sent me a list of works that were potentially available to the students for their exhibition. I immediately noticed that an appropriately-sized subset was from the Southwest—paintings and drawings by Pueblo, Hopi, and Navajo artists, most of which were created between 1940 and 1980. Here, then, was an easy way to jumpstart the students’ research: instead of trying to find a common thread among a hundred paintings, they could focus on these thirty.

Visiting the museum

For some of the students in the group, our visit to see those thirty artworks in person was their first trip to the OSU Museum of Art. As we looked at each piece on our list, we made observations about its condition, its relationship with other artworks in the selection, and its potential appeal to museum visitors. We also discussed symbolism and subject matter—in some cases, applying our existing knowledge to our interpretations or hypotheses about the work, and in others, simply asking questions based on its imagery. By the end of our visit, students had confirmed a checklist for their show, and each had selected specific artworks they were committed to researching further.

Students Roxanne Beason, Amanda Zimmerman, and Chestiké Williams looking at artworks from the Charles Little Collection.

We had a set of artworks, but the students also needed some background knowledge and a methodological framework. My second task, therefore, was to coordinate our existing course material with the curatorial timeline—and then work out supplementary learning opportunities so that students could most effectively apply their coursework to their curatorial research.

Already on deck: existing coursework

We began the semester reading Michelle Raheja on visual sovereignty, Hilary Weaver on Indigenous identity, and a mainstream press article about the “evolution” of Indigenous art. From the beginning, in other words, students were having conversations about who defines Native American people and art, and how expression through visual culture is an important (and often overlooked) aspect of Native sovereignty. As the semester went on, we read essays by and about artists, including museum catalogues and exhibition reviews, that directly addressed questions of how to interpret and curate Native American art in ways that highlight sovereignty.

In the second and third weeks of the semester, we studied the history of art in the southwest. Our textbook offered an invaluable overview, and an article by Sascha Scott about the San Ildefonso painter Awa Tsireh offered a powerful model for finding meaning—and expressions of visual sovereignty—in the formal qualities of individual artworks.

Field trip!

By happy coincidence, in the third week of the semester I had also scheduled a field trip to visit a variety of exhibitions and curators in Norman and Oklahoma City. Newly engaged in a curatorial project of our own, I encouraged my students to arrive for the trip prepared with specific questions for the curators we were going to meet: Michelle Lanteri, a graduate student and curator at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art at the University of Oklahoma, heather ahtone, Ph.D., senior curator of the American Indian Cultural Center and Museum, and Eric Singleton, Ph.D., curator of ethnology at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. In preparation for the trip, I had assigned two essays about Indigenous curating: heather’s 2018 essay for Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art, and an essay by Michelle McGeough published a few years earlier in Wicazo Sa Review.

The results of our in-class discussion with curators Michelle Lanteri, heather ahtone, and Eric Singleton.

After our field trip, we spent a class period discussing what we’d learned from each curator, and highlighting approaches we hoped to emulate in our own curatorial practice. One significant result of this experience was that it highlighted the variety of strengths different curators bring to the table, and implicitly, the value of collaboration in bringing all those diverse skill sets to the table. Even though the students were new to curating, they all brought useful background knowledge to bear on the show we were putting together.

Next week: research and writing, community collaborators, and most challenging of all, coming up with the exhibition’s title!

 

*As of this writing, Dr. Holland has joined the English faculty at Mohave Community College in Kingman, Arizona.

 

Curating “Intentional Exposure”: Sheridan Dunn

From April 2 through June 1, 2019, the student-curated exhibition “Intentional Exposure: Photography from the Permanent Collection,” was on view at the Oklahoma State University Museum of Art in the Malinda Berry Fischer Gallery. Part of my Spring 2019 course on the history of photography and museum studies, the exhibition prompted a series of responses from students. In the last post of this series, art history major Sheridan Dunn summarizes the benefits, both personal and practical, of her curatorial experience.

My name is Sheridan Dunn, and I am a student in the Art History department of Oklahoma State University. I took the Museum Exhibition course to better learn the different paths that you can go down in a museum or gallery job and it taught me just that!

Pursuing this course has been extremely impactful for my future career goals of working in a museum or gallery setting. Any individual who has an interest in museum studies should take any opportunity to participate in an internship or employment in this field. I have dabbled in various paths within my Art History degree. Being able to work directly with the OSU Museum of Art was an amazing opportunity that really helped me to narrow down what I want to do. In the end, anyone who takes this course will get hands-on experience that can be placed on your resume, and will form real connections and relationships with people in the museum. These individuals are helpful and will answer any questions you have about their jobs as well as the tasks you are assigned in the class.

The process of putting together our show was one of the most satisfying journeys to accomplish. We were able to take the time and go through every single detail of curating a show step by step, starting out with learning to appreciate the objects that the museum houses—therefore learning what it truly means to be a curator. Luckily, I was among great company, hardworking classmates, and assigned teammates who encouraged the process. The people working in the OSU Museum of Art were very knowledgeable about each step and the collection we were assigned to showcase. We as a class were able to hold memorable conversations regarding individual pieces. Each student was given the opportunity to choose the photographs we wanted and defend each piece as we learned more about them during the research process.

Researching is something that we all have to do as Art History students, but getting to use the actual museum database and learn more about each photograph we chose was really amazing. Research helped me connect to my photographs, making the whole process more intimate and special. I also got a fresh perspective on what it is like to be unable to come up with information on someone at all: sometimes it happens, and you have to figure out how to continue with your show even when problems arise.

I will never forget the hands-on experience and one-on-one time I had! I was assigned to the Exhibition/Installation team, and given the opportunity to handle the pieces for the show, even hang them on the wall. Experiencing each step as it happened was really influential in helping me narrow down what I actually want to do in a future museum job, and for that I am forever thankful for Professor Siddons and the entire OSU Museum of Art staff, who gave us the ability to show people what we could do as a class!

Curating “Intentional Exposure”: Bianca Martucci-Fink and Roxanne Beason

From April 2 through June 1, 2019, the student-curated exhibition “Intentional Exposure: Photography from the Permanent Collection,” was on view at the Oklahoma State University Museum of Art in the Malinda Berry Fischer Gallery. Part of my Spring 2019 course on the history of photography and museum studies, the exhibition prompted a series of responses from students. The first half of this week’s post, written by Bianca Martucci-Fink (Art History MA 2019), uses the experience of team curating as a starting point for broader questions about subjectivity and exhibition experiences. And the second half, by current MA student Roxanne Beason, offers a personal story embodying the subjective experience we all bring to museums and art.

Bianca: In co-curating Intentional Exposure: Photography from the Permanent Collection, I found that the most insightful and rewarding component to the experience was actually working with a large team and communicating with one another to meet our final goals. Though small group projects have been always been part of my academic endeavors, curating this show was the largest collaborative project I have worked on—both academically and professionally. Working closely with a team of roughly fifteen students, in conjunction with the Oklahoma State University Museum of Art staff, taught me how to better practice patience, trust, and cooperative and constructive criticism.

Developing the title of “Intentional Exposure.”

Our first task—deciding our preferred images out of the extensive collection of photographs in the museum’s archives, many of which are not seen in the exhibition—was a process wherein we had to resolve our different opinions quickly and efficiently. After the images themselves were agreed upon, we all had to centralize our “big ideas,” or themes, and the title. Though these developments may seem relatively simple in nature, they were difficult to work through in a large team because everyone’s opinions and ideas would have made for an excellent approach to this photographic collection. This has led me to consider the unanswerable concern of subjectivity that is inevitably part of working in a museum or artistic space.

Senior art history major Tanna Newberg explaining an aspect of the proposed exhibition layout for “Intentional Exposure” to art history MA student Bianca Martucci-Fink.

As an aspiring museum professional, how do you know when one idea is the “best” one? When there are so many “correct” ways to interpret and display works of art, how do we know when we, the ones in charge of sharing this art with the public, have even decided on the most effective way to communicate with our audiences? This curating experience has not only broadened my skill-set in museum and curatorial practices, but has continually reminded me that art experiences are often what you make them—as both an audience member and a curator. It is in fact our differing opinions and interpretations that make the art what it is. Rather than one Museum Exhibition class, our group experience is reflected in a collection of voices, thoughts, and ideas shared on the walls of the gallery.

Roxanne: Beginning the Museum Exhibitions course, I had very minimal curating experience. I was not sure how all of us in this course coming from so many different backgrounds and majors were going to agree and make exhibition work, but we did—and relatively smoothly. While we were learning the history of photography, we also were using our newly-developed knowledge and applying it to the OSU Museum of Art’s permanent collection of photographs. We each had to develop biographies and descriptions for the photographs we liked, and we had to present our arguments before our classmates as to why we thought they belonged in the show.

Richard S. Buswell, MD (American, b. 1945). “Sod Roof,” 1994. Gelatin silver print, gift of the artist, 2012.018.001.

For myself, the most compelling photograph was Richard Buswell’s Sod Roof. As a physician, Buswell met a lot of success through his hobby of photography by capturing abandoned, antiquated spaces around his hometown. Sod Roof makes me think of my Grandmother, who never shied from stopping to see things like sod houses or historic markers whenever we road tripped together. Though she passed away in 2008, I’ll never forget those trips and everything we saw together. She taught me that her grandmother had lived in a sod house when our family first settled in Kansas in the mid-19^th century.

I think that is the ultimate power of art and especially photography—how it can resonate with you and recall your memories. I know I will never be able to look at these selected photographs in Intentional Exposure and not think of the work and passion we all put into this project. I enjoyed working with my classmates to create something beautiful and thought-provoking. The memory of putting this show together and working with others to create something like Intentional Exposure is just as defining as the photographs themselves, I will cherish it, and I look forward to doing this again in the future.

Curating “Intentional Exposure”: Kayla Andrus

From April 2 through June 1, 2019, the student-curated exhibition “Intentional Exposure: Photography from the Permanent Collection,” was on view at the Oklahoma State University Museum of Art in the Malinda Berry Fischer Gallery. Part of my Spring 2019 course on the history of photography and museum studies, the exhibition prompted a series of responses from students. This week’s post was written by art history major Kayla Andrus. Like her partner in the course, Katlyn Young (who wrote last week’s post), Kayla addresses some of the challenges, as well as the rewards, of the curatorial experience.

Working as a student curator/ education programmer for this class was an amazing experience.  Together Katlyn Young and I came up with a few ideas for “Intentional Exposure.” Some went better than planned and others, well, not so well. Our favorite idea was the tube and fuzzy ball activity [editor’s note: see Katlyn’s post for pictures]. This activity coordinated pom-pom ball colors to emotions: for example, the red fuzzy ball was paired with the emotion of anger and the yellow fuzzy ball was paired with the emotion of happiness. Visitors to the OSU Museum of Art were encouraged to pick one of each color from the chart and place them in tubes next to the photographs. The activity was to look at the photograph on the wall and to think about its emotional portrayal, the visitor would then put the color/emotion that they felt the photograph portrayed in the tube next to the work. This activity was intended to further engage the museums visitors with our exhibition and to provide them with a sensory activity allowing them to touch something while looking. This activity has worked so well that the museum is constantly emptying the tubes so that there is enough room for other visitors to participate.

On the other hand, Katlyn and I worked on making a different activity for the Museums Art Lab. This activity involved storytelling through photographic images. Our initial idea was to copy and print cut-outs of the photographs that were in the exhibition so that people could collage them together to make a new story. Although the idea was strong, the activity wasn’t. All the photographs were at different scale, some images were cut off differently than others and it made the activity incompatible with the idea. However, we kept trying to make it work and chose to supplement the images we already had from the exhibition with images from the internet. These images included, portraits of the photographers, famous figures, soda bottles, funny hats and even butterfly wings. The supplementation of the photographs started to look like it was a good idea, however, when we took a step back from the activity, we realized that it no longer related to the major themes of the exhibition. Because of this, we abandoned the idea; but with enthusiasm we realized that we learned from our mistakes.

Overall, being apart of the education/ programming team allowed me to experiment with the capabilities of viewer experience and to find some pride within myself. I have really enjoyed seeing visitors use the fuzzy balls to interact with the exhibition, all ages seem to respond positively to the activity and with that I feel successful.

Curating “Intentional Exposure”: Katlyn Young

From April 2 through June 1, 2019, the student-curated exhibition “Intentional Exposure: Photography from the Permanent Collection,” was on view at the Oklahoma State University Museum of Art in the Malinda Berry Fischer Gallery. Part of my Spring 2019 course on the history of photography and museum studies, the exhibition prompted a series of responses from students. This week’s post was written by student Katlyn Young (Art History BA 2019) just before the end of the semester, and addresses some of the challenges, as well as the rewards, of the curatorial experience.

My name is Katlyn Young and I am a student in Dr. Louise Siddons’ Museum Exhibition class. This semester I was given the opportunity to work on the “Intentional Exposure” exhibition as a co-curator and a partner on the Community and College Programming team. This experience has contributed to my professional development by offering me lessons on communication, practicality, and applied creativity. It has also given me a new perspective on the idea of a job within the museum field by exposing me to different kinds of situations that one may come across while working on an exhibition. Overall, it was a satisfying feeling once everything had been completed, and the installation was finally on the walls of the gallery. However, there were a couple of bumps down the road in regards to planning and execution.

A view of one of the visitor activities designed by Katlyn and Kayla, in which visitors were asked to code their emotional responses to selected photographs in the exhibition.

My project partner, Kayla Andrus, and I completed two major aspects of our community programming, but we did have trouble with our third concept.  We had proposed a storytelling activity to be included within the ArtLab, but there were practical constraints once we started the process of physically creating the activity. We both decided to discuss this problem with Dr. Siddons, and she reassured us that some projects may not always work out like you may have hoped. She advised us to instead take this as a learning experience for the future, and to reflect on what we had already accomplished by that point.

View of a photograph in the exhibition accompanied by the emotion activity tube.

And we had accomplished a great deal before addressing the storytelling activity. Kayla and Ms. Carrie Kim, Curator of Education and Public Programming, proposed the idea of our physically-engaging activity that encouraged the audience to display how a certain photograph made them feel. Ms. Kim also provided us with examples and guidelines of engaging worksheets and handouts in order to open up the conversation around art and photography.

Two examples of the emotion activity’s results for Henri Huet’s 1966 photograph of soldiers during the Vietnam War (Gift of Robert Flynn Johnson, 2015.014.004).

I found the entire project to be essential to the development of my professional interest and experience. I learned what it was like to work with a large team within a museum institution, and I found this to be very rewarding as I had previously only worked on a small team of one or two people in a gallery. This project also taught me some lessons on practicality, and that sometimes not everything will work out exactly like you planned. This led to experience with the idea of applied creativity, and how that works within an environment and for an exhibition that is viewed by the public.