Upcoming Special Exhibits

2025 Special Exhibit Schedule

January 28 – March 16 

The Fourth Grade Project

In the past decade, acclaimed artist Judy Gelles (1944–2020) interviewed and photographed more than 300 fourth-grade students from a wide range of economic and cultural backgrounds in China, England, India, Israel, Italy, Nicaragua, St. Lucia, South Africa, Dubai, South Korea, and multiple areas of the United States. She asked all of the students the same three questions: Who do you live with? What do you wish for? What do you worry about? Their varied stories, collected in the exhibition The Fourth Grade Project, touch on the human condition and urgent social issues. The Fourth Grade Project will be open from Tuesday, January 28, through Sunday, March 16, in the Mabee Foundation Gallery of the Cherokee Strip Regional Heritage Center.

The students’ stories capture the gamut of societal issues that we face today: violence, immigration, the demise of the nuclear family, global hunger, and the impact of the media and popular culture. The combination of frontal and reverse portraits allowed for the development of both personal and universal stories, and derived from the subject care-taker’s reactions to photography in each country. In the US, photographing from the front can be problematic because of privacy issues. In China, it is considered disrespectful to photograph from the back. In India, parents and teachers made no objections to either frontal or back portraits. In all of the portraits across the spectrum of countries, the children are presented as individuals; however, their stories speak to greater pervasive truths and problems within our society. Told in their own words, these children’s stories touch on some of our most pressing social issues and common human experiences.

The cost of this exhibit is included with the regular museum admission.

The Fourth Grade Project is organized by ExhibitsUSA, a national division of Mid-America Arts Alliance and The National Endowment for the Arts.

April 15 – June 15

A Body of Work: More Than Skin Deep

This exhibit will showcase various forms of artwork created by local tattoo artists who are passionate about expressing their creativity through a diverse range of tattooing styles and mediums. A Body of Work includes painting, drawings, beadwork, and other artistic forms that highlight the art of tattooing. The exhibit will also explore the history of tattooing, including its recent legalization in Oklahoma.

Featured artists will include Culture Tattoo in Enid and Red Sagas Tattoo Parlor in Woodward. Artwork displayed in the exhibition will be available for purchase.

The cost of this exhibit is included with regular museum admission.

July 1 – August 30

Resilience: A Sansei Sense of Legacy

In 1942, in response to the bombing of Pearl Harbor by Japanese forces, President Franklin Roosevelt signed into law Executive Order 9066. The law ordered the forced imprisonment of all Japanese Americans living on the West Coast of the United States, which at the time had the second-largest population of Japanese people living outside of Japan. Told from the point of view of Sansei (third generation) Japanese Americans, Resilience—A Sansei Sense of Legacy is an exhibition of eight artists whose work reflects on the effect of EO9066 as it resonated from generation to generation.

While several artists employ traditional Japanese methods in constructing their work, others use iconography relating to Japanese culture as a jumping-off point for personal explorations of the incarceration camps. Each in their own way, the artists in this exhibition express moments of deeply felt pain and reluctant acceptance, emotions that were often withheld by their elders.

In the years following the retraction of EO9066 at the end of WWII, Japanese American families and individuals were forced to come to terms with lost property, the shame and indignation of incarceration, and the task of re-integration into a society that had expelled them. After their release from the incarceration camps that dotted the American West and Midwest during the war, Japanese Americans used the phrase “shikata ga nai” – it cannot be helped – and the word “gaman” – to persevere and stay silent – to speak to their resilience against the losses they incurred at the behest of Roosevelt’s order.

The exhibition artists include Kristine Aono, Reiko Fujii, Wendy Maruyama, Lydia Nakashima Degarrod, Tom Nakashima, Roger Shimomura, Judy Shintani, and Jerry Takigawa.

The cost of this exhibit is included with regular museum admission.

Resilience – A Sansei Sense of Legacy is organized by ExhibitsUSA, a national division of Mid-America Arts Alliance and The National Endowment for the Arts.

November 4 – January 10

The Rhapsody Project

Through a collaboration with Tammy Wilson of the Enid Event Company in Enid, the CSRHC will showcase the history and items of individuals or groups from the Cherokee Outlet who have contributed to the music industry through this unique in-house exhibit.

Learn about the early days of the local radio stations and music shops; well-known and newer performers like Vida Chenoweth, Leona Mitchell, Kyle Dillingham, Wyatt Wilson, winner of the 2024 TCMA Steel Guitar Player of the Year; and others.

Vintage radios, concert posters, instruments and one-of-a-kind merchandise will be on display during this exciting look at the impact that the Cherokee Outlet has had on music. You might discover that northwest Oklahoma has ties to your favorite band!

The cost of this exhibit is included with regular museum admission.