Ball State’s David Owsley Museum of Art Exhibition Showcases New Acquisitions

The David Owsley Museum of Art (DOMA) at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind., will display a selection of recent additions to the DOMA collection from Sept. 29 through Dec. 22, 2022.

DOMA is open to the public 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays, and 1:30 p.m.-4:30 p.m. on Saturdays. There is no admission fee. The exhibition and related events are part of Ball State’s Arts Alive Series, presented by the University’s College of Fine Arts.

The exhibition features three major paintings:

• A study of laborers harvesting sugar cane by American Regionalist Thomas Hart Benton;

•A monumental “inscape” or interior psychological landscape by Chilean Surrealist Roberto Matta; and

• Contemporary artist Diane Burko’s Antarctica Diptych, which bears witness to global warming.

These highlighted works are accompanied by several new additions of American art to the collection by history painter Emanuel Leutze, symbolist Elihu Vedder, American impressionist Ernest Lawson, midwestern sculptors Janet Scudder and Mildred Welsh Hammond, Park Avenue cubist Albert Eugene Gallatin, mid-century modernist Earl Kerkam, and African American artist Joseph Delaney.

The variety of objects is further enhanced with photo drawings by former Ball State professor Lawrence Graham, Japanese prints and sculpture, and a spectacular African mask. These works add significantly to the museum’s world art collection—which reflects Ball State’s inclusive values, and represents the increasingly diverse heritage of its student body and the people of East Central Indiana. 

“The exhibition gives our visitors the opportunity to monitor the growth of the museum’s diverse holdings,” Robert G. La France, director of the David Owsley Museum of Art, said. “I am perhaps most proud of the acquisition of Diane Burko’s Antarctica Diptych; now the global art collection has works of art representing all seven continents.”