Speak While You Can
August 24, 2024 – December 1, 2024
This exhibit displays the resilience and creativity of Indigenous people and is one part of the fight to keep Native languages alive. Utilizing the vocabulary of various art forms, including printmaking, painting, photography, ceramics, and installation, the contemporary artists in the show comment on the state of their tribal languages and their relation to their communities and the world at large. “As the title Speak: Speak While You Can makes clear, these artists have an urgent message: that we must speak up with our art, proclaiming with visual voices the message that our languages are the lifeblood of our cultures.” Tony A. Tiger (Sac & Fox/Seminole/Muscogee) and Bobby C. Martin (Muscogee/Creek).
Prehistoric Visions
June 29 to December 1
Prehistoric Visions surveys the deeply rooted relationship between art and Vertebrate Paleontology. Since humans first began finding fossils, art has been used to document and interpret what these remnants could be. Integral to this are the artistic renderings of these specimens and their potential lives. From drawings of bones to full reconstructions of extinct animals, from a quarry map made in the field to an entire reimagined environment, “artist visualization plays an inextricable role in the discipline of paleontology,” explained Dr. Lungmus, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the museum.
Early depictions of prehistoric animals were often based on theories describing these creatures as slow, unintelligent, and often violent. Imagery has evolved as continued fossil discoveries and increased understanding of modern animals significantly shifted these perceptions. Paleontologists continue to hone theories of ancient animals’ posture, behavior, feeding habits, colorations, movement patterns and other aspects of their lives, perpetually collaborating with artists to create new visions of life in earth’s ancient past.
This exhibit features one-of-a-kind pieces by students participating in the OU School of Visual Arts. The students created works inspired by fossils from the Vertebrate Paleontology Collection at the Sam Noble Museum as they learned about the various aspects of scientific illustration and interpretation. Many of these fossils were originally found in Oklahoma and the American Southwest.
This exhibition was co-curated by Haley Prestifilippo, Professor of Drawing, Sohail Shehada, OU Associate Professor of Figurative Sculpture, and Tess Elliot, OU Associate Professor of Art, Technology & Culture, and Jacqueline Lungmus, Assistant Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology and Assistant Professor of Geosciences, and co-sponsored by the OU School of Visual Arts and the Sam Noble Museum.
