Speak While You Can
August 24 – December 1, 2024
This exhibit presented the resilience and creativity of Indigenous people and contributed to ongoing efforts 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 commented 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 – December 1, 2024
Prehistoric Visions surveyed 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 Sam Noble Museum.
This exhibit featured 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.
Life in One Cubic Foot
May 11 – August 4, 2024
“Life in One Cubic Foot” follows the research of Smithsonian scientists and photographer David Liittschwager as they discover what a cubic foot of land or water—a biocube—reveals about the diversity of life on the planet. Biocubes featured in the exhibition were placed in environments across the globe to learn what forms of life, both known and unknown, could be found in the cube during a 24-hour period. In addition to exploring life through the exhibition, visitors are also invited to participate in citizen science and uncover the biodiversity in their backyard by creating and monitoring their own biocube. se changes and answer questions about how to manage the complex dynamics of wildlife and natural resources will be improved as gaps in the tree of life are filled.
Bug Squad
February 10 – April 28, 2024
Bug Squad is a hands-on exhibit exploring the unique “superpowered” abilities of bugs which opened on February 10, 2024 at the Sam Noble Museum. Exhibit highlights included the Spider Web Escape area with a slide, the Ant Colony Climber, and experiencing (virtually) what it’s like to fly like a dragonfly in the Dragonfly Drone. Families compared the way insects communicate by sound and light, and explored how colors and lights function in nature. The exhibit is produced by Omaha Children’s Museum.
Living Languages
October 14, 2023 – January 28, 2024
Living Languages represents 20 years of celebrating the Native languages of Oklahoma and the United States. The exhibit showcased over 120 pieces of student art from the museum’s annual Oklahoma Native American Youth Language Fair which celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2023. The ONAYLF continues to inspire students to preserve irreplaceable culture and heritage, and we hope visitors enjoyed the projects that students produced over two decades of competition and learning.
Picturing Science
November 4, 2023 – January 28, 2024
Presented by the American Museum of Natural History, Picturing Science lets visitors dive into over 20 jaw-dropping sets of larger-than-life images. You’ll witness the mind-boggling scope of research happening in museums all over the world, and get a sneak peek into the mind-blowing ways we use optical tools in groundbreaking studies! Get set for a wild ride!
Nature’s Blueprint: Biomimicry in Art and Design
June 17 – October 22, 2023
In an age of complex environmental challenges, why not look to the ingenuity of nature for solutions? The forms, patterns, and processes found in the natural world—refined by 3.8 billion years of evolution—can inspire our design of everything from raincoats to skyscrapers. This approach to innovation, called biomimicry, is becoming increasingly popular. Bird wings. Beehives. Porcupine quills. These have inspired design improvements that enable faster travel, safer buildings, and more precise medical equipment.
Flight Lines: The Art of Natural History at OU
July 15 – November 26, 2023
This exhibit featuring the scientific illustration of birds as depicted by students and professionals was created in collaboration with the University of Oklahoma School of Visual Arts. Flight Lines: The Art of Natural History at OU pairs work by students with that of renowned bird artists George Miksch Sutton, Louis Agassiz Fuertes and Francis Lee Jaques.
Visitors had the opportunity to view drawings, paintings and animations that capture the beauty of birds and flight. Students in OU’s School of Visual Arts (SoVA) created much of the artwork on display during their courses, “Drawing the Natural World” and “Computer Animation,” which were included as part of an exciting new scientific visualization track within SoVA that teaches students the art of translating scientific knowledge into visual representations.
The exhibit also showcased pieces by three of the most respected scientific illustrators of the 20th Century, most notably George Miksch Sutton, former OU Professor and Curator of Ornithology at the Sam Noble Museum. Works from the artists ranged from preliminary sketches to polished watercolors, including many pieces that were on display for the first time.
Rainforest Adventure
February 25, 2023 – June 4, 2023
Rainforest Adventure brings the museum experience inside a fully interactive maze environment. Visitors explore one of the least-known habitats on earth in a fully interactive maze exhibit, full of the sights and sounds of a tropical rainforest. Created by Minotaur Mazes, Rainforest Adventure offers visitors an interactive experience that empowers visitors to make a difference after they learn how essential rainforests are to human health and survival, and that by caring for the rainforest they are caring for the planet.
Sahara Sea Monsters
October 15, 2022 – February 23, 2023
Sahara Sea Monsters took visitors on a journey through 600 million years of the Moroccan fossil record. Visitors discovered massive mosasaurs, amazing trilobites and other spectacular invertebrates.
Narwhal: Revealing an Arctic Legend
February 12, 2022 – June 19, 2022
From their depiction in the 1500s as angry sea monsters to their status as icons of pop culture today, the narwhal with its unique spiral tusk has inspired legend in Inuit and European society and fascinated people across cultures for centuries. Developed by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and its Arctic Studies Center and organized for travel by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES), the exhibition explores interdisciplinary research about the narwhal in their rapidly changing Arctic environment conducted by Smithsonian scientists in collaboration with Arctic researchers and members of Inuit communities. The exhibition uses firsthand accounts from these scientists and Inuit community members to reveal how traditional knowledge and experience, coupled with scientific research, heighten the understanding of narwhals and the changing global climate.
Beautiful Beasts: The Unseen Life of Oklahoma Spiders and Insects
September 25, 2021 – January 30, 2022
Imagine traveling on safari through a land of bizarre and alien beasts, a world of predators and prey. Who would think that this place exists right outside your back door? Oklahoma photographer Thomas Shahan will take you there. Using homemade equipment and inexpensive lenses, he captures a remarkable world of unspeakable beauty and hidden presence. His fantastical large-scale images of mid-western spiders and insects have been featured in Weekly Reader, National Geographic, Wired Magazine, and Popular Photography.
The exhibit presents a series of Shahan’s immense color photographs alongside descriptions of where and how the photographs were made. The exhibit chronicles the photographer’s tireless search for arthropods, a venture that has made him into an outspoken advocate for education about the role they play in our lives. Shahan’s up-close views of Oklahoma spiders and insects promise to forever change how visitors think and feel about these creatures.
Guatemalan Textiles: Heart of the Maya World
September 14 – December 6, 2021
This exhibit, on display in the second-floor Higginbotham gallery, presents a spectacular selection of traditional clothing (traje, atz’yeqb’al) from the varied regions of Guatemala. In addition to the embroidered and brocaded traditional blouse (huipil) and skirt ensemble, textiles such as waist sashes, shawls and headwraps will also be on display. These textiles are handwoven using different types of artisanal looms. The exhibit will also be trilingual in English, Spanish and K’iche’, a native language of Guatemala.
All of the outfits selected to be on display are a part of the Sam Noble Museum’s ethnology collection. Many of the outfits were originally donated from Texas A&M University and John C. Pitzer. This exhibition was produced in partnership with the Office of the Guatemalan Consulate General in Oklahoma City.
In the Dark
May 29 – September 12, 2021
Darkness may elevate excitement, inspire curiosity, or cause hesitation, but rarely can it be ignored. Darkness challenges animals and plants to adapt to life without light because they still need to find food, find mates and avoid predators, whether in caves, the deep sea or even a forest at night. Since prehistoric times, humans have sought to understand darkness and its mysteries, and have learned from these nocturnal creatures to create new technologies to disperse the dark and kindle light. Explore this hands-on exhibit and investigate and solve some of these mysteries using interactive stations, walk-through dioramas, models and engaging explanatory panels.
Darkness beckons exploration; prepare to discover what’s In the Dark!
