Gallery exhibitions illustrate transformative moments in Missouri and US history. Located on the first floor, the main and topical galleries feature rotating exhibitions, with select works on permanent display. A second-floor corridor gallery features curated materials from SHSMO collections. The galleries are located at the SHSMO Center for Missouri Studies in Columbia.
This exhibition explores Black History Month’s 2020 national theme, The Vote, with a selection of twentieth-century editorial cartoons that address the issue of African American voting rights. Most of the artworks displayed are original drawings from the nationally renowned cartoon collection of the State Historical Society of Missouri. These rarely seen artworks document the long struggle Americans of color have experienced in their attempts to exercise their fundamental rights as citizens.
Music in Missouri explores Missouri’s contribution to American music. The state’s early folk musicians, marching bands, and choral societies inspired the birth of ragtime and then overlapped with the evolution of a new brand of blues in St. Louis. Those emerging styles then intersected with an explosion of new jazz in Kansas City, at the same time that Ozark bluegrass migrated northwards and entered this melting pot of rhythm to help create rock n’ roll, rhythm and blues, modern country, and gospel.
This yearlong exhibition in three installments showcases examples of Thomas Hart Benton’s original watercolors and drawings for the Limited Editions Club publications of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Life on the Mississippi. As a Missourian, Benton brought his own understanding of the landscape and people of the state to his illustrations, creating perceptive images that complement Twain’s prose.
Award-winning photographer Oliver Schuchard has made Missouri his home for more than four decades. Over the years, Schuchard has often turned his camera to diverse landscapes in his adopted state and elsewhere. This exhibition, in two installments, displays Schuchard’s dedication to the aesthetics and craft of black and white landscape photography over the course of his distinguished career.
