Exhibitions

Artwork plays a significant role in fostering environmental stewardship and the Missouri Department of Conservation has a long history of partnering with artists to promote this mission.  This new exhibition in the SHSMO Art Gallery features work by two artists who have made significant contributions to Missouri’s conservation movement: current MDC nature photographer Noppadol Paothong and former MDC artist Charles Schwarz.

About the Artists:

In honor of Disney Studios 100th birthday, the SHSMO art gallery presents Daily Disney: Walt Disney Cartoons in the Funny Pages.  Disney, who grew up in the Missouri towns of Marceline and Kansas City, cross promoted his animated cartoons with nationally syndicated comic strips.  This exhibition includes a selection of these cartoons, as well as other images, such as a photo of Missouri artist Thomas Hart Benton at Disney Studios, that reflect Disney's powerful influence on American culture.

Join us at the Center for Missouri Studies as we showcase a new exhibit that examines the illustrious history of Missouri baseball. The exhibit is on display in the Wenneker Family Corridor Gallery (2nd floor) through December 2024. Explore baseball’s rise in Missouri from grassroots origins to teams and great players at all levels of the sport. The public is invited to an opening reception July 18, 4-6 p.m. at the Center for Missouri Studies, 2nd floor. Refreshments will be served.

Benton & Benton: The Senator & The Artist explores art and material culture related to Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton (1782-1858), who served five terms and was known as “Old Bullion” for his support of gold currency, and his great-grand-nephew and namesake, Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975), the famed Missouri artist and founder of the American Regionalist Movement.  

The artworks currently on view in the SHSMO Art Gallery are drawn from a recent donation by Simmons Bank of 38 works of photography, ceramics, fibers, painting, and mixed media. The bank is well-known for its rich art collection initiated by Brenda Landrum Bingham when the institution was owned by her family and scrupulously developed over several decades by her brother, Marquis "Mark" Landrum.

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.

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.

Our gallery space includes a permanent exhibition of ten large World War II paintings created by Thomas Hart Benton between 1941 and 1943. These images reflect the anxiety, horror, grief, and resolve that Benton and his audience experienced after the U.S. entered WW II on December 7, 1941. Benton responded to the national crisis with a series of nightmarish visions of war, eight of which were purchased by Abbott Laboratories and exhibited in New York City in 1942.