Art Collection

Order No. 11 (Detail), George Caleb Bingham

SHSMO boasts the nation's best collection of Missouri regional and westward expansion art, including Thomas Hart Benton's Year of Peril series, Fred Geary's regionalist woodcuts, and one of the largest collections of paintings by George Caleb Bingham. Also found in the collection are works by John James Audubon, Karl Bodmer, Frank Nuderscher, Fred Shane, and many other Missouri artists.

SHSMO's extensive editorial cartoon collection includes original drawings by Daniel Fitzpatrick, S. J. Ray, Bill Mauldin, Don Hesse, Tom Engelhardt, and others.

Contemporary works are continually added to the collection. Twenty-first century examples by artists such as Robert Bussabarger, Notley Hawkins, Jon Luvelli, Brian Mahieu, Jane Mudd, Byron Smith, and Frank Stack are preserved here for future generations.

SHSMO artworks are often loaned to other institutions to help share the story of Missouri and its role opening the West. SHSMO held artwork has been shown in galleries from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, allowing new and larger audiences to view significant works within the collection.

"Art is very accessible. Even people who aren't interested in reading scholarly journals or poring through newspapers can look at works of art and immediately begin to understand the past."
-Dr. Joan Stack, SHSMO curator of art collections

Accessing the Art Collection

Visit

The State Historical Society of Missouri Center for Missouri Studies Art Gallery features several topical and permanent galleries with rotating exhibitions (see below). These exhibitions can be accessed free of charge during regular business hours. SHSMO also welcomes visits from classes and groups. You can request a tour online.

Digital Collections

See representations of frontiersmen, World War II soldiers, and local leaders who shaped Missouri's culture through the digital art collections.

Many works of George Caleb Bingham, Thomas Hart Benton, and Fred Geary are available as well as more than 17,000 editorial cartoons from SHSMO's holdings.

Publications

SHSMO's scholarly publications offer an in-depth look at Missouri history and heritage. Four of the Society's featured books provide a glimpse into the lives and careers of significant artists with ties to the Show-Me State including:

  • "But I Forget That I Am a Painter and Not a Politician": The Letters of George Caleb Bingham
  • Four Turbulent Decades: A Cartoon History of America, 1962–2001, From the Pen of Tom Engelhardt
  • Fred Geary: Missouri Master of the Woodcut
  • Thomas Hart Benton: Artist, Writer and Intellectual

State Historical Society of Missouri publications are available for purchase in the online gift shop, and proceeds benefit SHSMO research centers and programs.

Reproductions

Enjoy the work of some of Missouri's greatest artists in your home or office. SHSMO offers a select few reproduction prints and note cards through its online gift shop. Society publications are also available through the store. Members always save 10 percent, and proceeds benefit SHSMO research centers and programs.

Support the Art Collection

Financial gifts to SHSMO allow strategic additions to the nation's most significant Missouri-related art collection and expand the resources available to stage unique exhibitions. Learn more about making a gift.

Material donations are another way that you can support SHSMO. The State Historical Society of Missouri preserves paintings, political cartoons, fine art prints, photographs, newspapers, maps, and the written records of individuals, families, and organizations. Learn how donating your art can help make Missouri's history more vibrant and complete.

 

Art Exhibitions

Art and educational exhibitions illustrate transformative moments in Missouri and U.S. history. The State Historical Society of Missouri houses exhibition galleries at the Center for Missouri Studies in Columbia. SHSMO also provides materials for display in galleries and exhibition spaces across the state.

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Ginger Rogers costume exhibition
March 2 – August 31 | Center for Missouri Studies, Columbia

Public Opening Reception: March 14, 5:30 p.m. - 7:30 p.m.


African American Art in Missouri
February 6 – May 9 | University of Missouri-Columbia

A new exhibit explores the history of African American Art in Missouri in the 20th and 21st centuries through the work of ten artists, with a special emphasis on artwork in the collection of the State Historical Society of Missouri, as well as artists associated with Mid Missouri and the University of Missouri-Columbia. The public is invited to view the exhibit at Ellis Library, Colonnade cases, on the Mizzou campus. 


Resurrection
November 1, 12:00 am – March 30, 11:59 pm | Columbia

This video Installation by Valerie Wedel, an art professor at William Woods University in Fulton, Missouri, features enlarged, hand-painted copies of letters that are held in the archives of the State Historical Society of Missouri. The images have been artistically “aged” for effect, crumpled, torn, and scattered to represent controversies surrounding access to historical information. The reversed and animated texts symbolize breathing life back into these stories. These animations are intended to revive the texts.

 


Painting depicting chaotic scene of soldiers forcibly evacuating civilians
May 3, 2023 – December 3, 2026 | Center for Missouri Studies Art Gallery

Our permanent exhibition of works by George Caleb Bingham includes the monumental 1869/70 Civil War painting, Gen. Order No. 11, which represents the execution of a military directive evacuating civilians in four Missouri border counties. The  evacuation order that took place in the midst of  Missouri/Kansas guerilla fighting  in 1863.  Also on display is the Bingham painting Watching the Cargo, a classic example of the artist's genre images representing the Missouri workers involved in river commerce.  Finally a number of Bingham portraits are also exhibited.


Formal portrait painting of Harry Truman, his wife Bess, and daughter Mary Margaret
May 3, 2023 – December 3, 2026 | Center for Missouri Studies Art Gallery

Greta Kempton's Portrait of the Truman Family (President Harry S. Truman, Elizabeth “Bess” Truman and their daughter Mary Margaret) is on permanent exhibition at SHSMO. The triple portrait was commissioned for the State Historical Society of Missouri with left-over funds raised by Missouri Democrats for Truman’s 1948 inaugural celebration. The painting was officially presented to the Society in 1952.