Current Exhibitions

The William A. Clark Collection: A Homecoming

October 4, 2018 - June 15, 2019 | Meloy Gallery

This exhibition features nine works by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Jean-Charles Cazin, Jules Dupré, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Thomas Gainsborough, and a sculpture attributed to Donatello – all new gifts from the Trustees of the Corcoran Gallery of Art to the MMAC Permanent Collection. The works once belonged to the estate of “Copper King” William Andrews Clark, a former Montana senator.

Born in 1839, Clark eventually made his way out West working the roles of farmer, teacher, soldier, prospector, woodcutter, teamster, cattle driver, grocer, mining engineer, banker and eventually a real estate tycoon and a railroad magnate. He became one the most powerful and influential 19th-century Americans with peers including John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan and Andrew Carnegie. MMAC is one of the only non- Washington D.C. entities to receive works because of Clark’s important Montana history.

Thursday, October 4, 3:00pm – 6:00pm, Opening Reception for the exhibition “The William A. Clark Collection: A Homecoming”, in the PARTV Lobby and Meloy and Paxson Galleries. Refreshments will be served. 

Thursday, November 15, 7:00pm, MSU-Billings Department of History Professor and Chair Keith Edgerton, PhD, presents a talk entitled, “Copper King: The Life and Times of W.A. Clark” in the Masquer Theatre, PARTV Center in conjunction with the exhibition William A. Clark Collection: A Homecoming.

Between Wisdom and Knowledge: Contemporary Native American Art 

October 18, 2018 - February 16, 2019 | Paxson Gallery

Between Wisdom & Knowledge: Contemporary Native American Art explores themes of dislocation – geographical, cultural, and artistic – and the diverse and compelling creative strategies Native artists have used in pursuit of self-realization or, as scholar Gail Tremblay termed it, “an American Indian sensitivity to nature and to cultural constructions visible to an outsider examining U.S. urban culture for its contradictions.”

Artists in the exhibition shed light on such concerns as environmental devastation, poverty, and the vulnerability of cultural legacies. Spanning a wide range of styles from realism to abstraction, photography, collage and assemblage, the exhibition dwells on the competing values of knowledge and wisdom – two paradigms of progress pitted against each other within the doctrine of Manifest Destiny.   

Works on view will include selections from the MMAC Permanent Collection, recent gifts, and loans from private collectors including works by Jeneese Hilton, Jay Laber, Neil Parsons, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Kevin Red Star, Francis Wall, Anthony Yazzie and others.