A world-class collection of American art, stunning architecture, and 120 acres of Ozark forest with five miles of trails. Admission to the museum is always free.
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There’s more to the museum than just the galleries— come enjoy hands-on creative fun with art classes for all ages and experience levels..
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Museum & Buildings
Trails and Grounds open daily sunrise to sunset.
We will be closed Monday, May 13, to prepare for the visit of Antiques Roadshow. We will return to normal hours of operation Wednesday, May 15.
Join us for a virtual conversation with artist Kay WalkingStick and Karen Kramer, curator of Native American and Oceanic art and culture at Peabody Essex Museum, as they discuss our temporary exhibition, In American Waters: The Sea in American Painting.
Drawing from their careers and experiences, these two distinguished guest speakers will shed new light on Kay’s work and the exhibition, give insights into the life and process of an exhibition artist, and be just plain entertaining. Register online to receive updates and the Zoom link in your inbox or watch the discussion on Facebook Live.
Free, registration requested. Register online or call Guest Services at 479.657.2335 to receive updates and reserve your spot today. Once registered, participants will receive an email with information about the event and the Zoom link for your convenience.
About the Speakers
Kay WalkingStick, the Cherokee/Anglo artist, has had over 30 solo shows in the US and Europe. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum in New York City, the Museum of Canada in Ottowa, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, The Newark Museum in Newark, New Jersey, the Whitney Museum of American Art and many other museums across the US.
WalkingStick taught painting and drawing to graduate and undergraduate students at Cornell University for 17 years, where she is now an Emerita Professor. She was given an honorary doctorate by both Pratt Institute and by Arcadia University. She is a fellow of the National Academy of Design and the American Academy of Arts & Science. In 2015 her retrospective of 75 paintings and drawings, covering the years from 1970 to 2015, opened at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. Since closing in September of 2016, the exhibition has traveled to various venues across the country including the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the Montclair Museum in Montclair, New Jersey, The Art Institute in Dayton, Ohio, the Kalamazoo Art Museum, in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona. The show was listed by Hyperallergic as one of the best 15 exhibitions to open nationwide in 2016. WalkingStick and her husband, artist Dirk Bach, live and paint in a townhouse in Easton, Pennsylvania.
Karen Kramer’s longstanding commitment to innovative approaches to Indigenous art and culture, and her broad experiences working with Native artists, scholars, communities and other stakeholders help shape the museum’s ambitious program in Native American and Oceanic Art and Culture, including the growth of its collection, its sensitive presentation and its ongoing interpretation and preservation.
Over the past 20 years, Kramer helped produce more than ten major exhibitions on Native American art and culture at the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM), including the nationally traveling, groundbreaking exhibition T.C. Cannon: At the Edge of America. She also curated Native Fashion Now, a nationally-touring exhibition that celebrated contemporary Native American fashion from the 1950s to today, and the paradigm-shifting Shapeshifting: Transformations in Native American Art which dismantled stereotypes and explored concepts of change, worldview, and politics in historical and contemporary Native art. She’s co-curating the new Putnam Gallery of Native American and American Art opening in December 2021 and is the coordinating curator of the Denver Art Museum’s traveling exhibition Each/Other: Marie Watt and Cannupa Hanska Luger, opening in January 2022.
Kramer directs PEM’s innovative Native American Fellowship program, which provides training for rising Native American leaders in the museum, cultural and academic sectors. Kramer served as President, Vice-President, and as board member for the Native American Art Studies Association from 2003 to 2015. She worked on three inaugural exhibitions at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian and for National NAGPRA. She earned her M.A. in Anthropology from George Washington University, and her B.A. in Anthropology from the University of Denver.
