Exhibitions and Programs
Fall 2024
Waterways
August 27 - December 12, 2024
Image Detail: Art Sinsabaugh, Untitled, 1950 (Courtesy of Illinois State Museum)
Waterways is co-curated by The Schingoethe Center’s Director, Dr. Natasha Ritsma, and Art Curator from the Illinois State Museum, Doug Stapleton. This exhibition will feature photographs, sculptures, prints, and installation pieces by more than twenty five artists addressing historical, geological, and environmental issues related to waterways in the Midwest. Situated between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River, the two largest freshwater systems in North America, this exhibition will examine social and political, historical, and poetic artistic responses to existing in proximity to these vital waterways.
Spring 2025
Away From Home: American Indian Boarding School Stories
January 28 - March 14, 2025
Sioux children on their first day at school, 1897 (Courtesy of Library of Congress)
Beginning in the 1870s, the US government attempted to educate and assimilate American Indians into “civilized” society by placing children—of all ages, from thousands of homes and hundreds of diverse tribes—in distant, residential boarding schools. Many were forcibly taken from their families and communities and stripped of all signs of “Indianness,” even forbidden to speak their own language amongst themselves. Up until the 1930s, students were trained for domestic work and trade in a highly regimented environment. Many children went years without familial contact, and these events had a lasting, generational impact. Away from Home: American Indian Boarding School Stories explores off-reservation boarding schools in a kaleidoscope of voices.
Click here for Past Exhibits and Programs.
Ongoing Exhibitions
Contemporary Native American Art Display
Marlin Johnston Gallery
Installation view: Wendy Red Star, Four Seasons series, 2006
View selections of contemporary Native American art from the Schingoethe Center collection, including Four Seasons by Wendy Red Star (Apsáalooke/Crow), Sikyatki Totem by Tammy Garcia (Santa Clara Pueblo), and various works by Chris Pappan (Osage / Kaw / Cheyenne River Lakota Sioux).