Whatcom Museum curator of art Amy Chaloupka will present an illustrated lecture on the themes and artists featured in the exhibition Many Wests: Artists Shape an American Idea at 6 p.m. Thursday, April 21, in the Mary Eddy and Fred Jones Auditorium of the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, 555 Elm Ave., on the University of Oklahoma Norman campus.

The lecture is open to the public with no admission charge and is being presented by the OU School of Visual Arts’ Charles M. Russell Center for the Study of Art of the American West as part of the Merkel Family Foundation Distinguished Lecture Series.

The exhibition Many Wests: Artists Shape an American Idea examines the perspectives of 48 modern and contemporary artists who offer broader and more inclusive views of the West beyond its narrow representation in popular culture and through dominant historical narratives. The traveling exhibition, jointly curated from the collections of the Whatcom Museum, the Boise Art Museum, the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at the University of Oregon, the Utah Museum of Fine Art, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum through the SAAM + Art Bridges Initiative, opened March 19 at the Whatcom Museum in Bellingham, Washington.

Chaloupka has organized over 30 exhibitions over the past 15 years. She has written numerous essays for exhibition publications and has led major exhibition initiatives including the retrospective WANTED: Ed Bereal for Disturbing the Peace (Whatcom Museum, 2019), Crossover: Cruce de Via (Western Gallery, Western Washington University, 2015), Nek Chand: The World In A Garden and Hiding Places: Memory in the Arts, (John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan Wisconsin, 2017 and 2010).

Founded in 1998, the Charles M. Russell Center for the Study of Art of the American West is the first such university-based program in the nation. The center is dedicated to the pursuit and dissemination of knowledge in the field of American art history as it relates to the western United States. Through its resource holdings, national symposia, lecture series, course offerings, and outreach programs, the Russell Center actively engages students and the public in developing a better understanding of, and appreciation for the art of the American West. Special focus is given to the art of Charles M. Russell and his contemporaries. For more information on the Russell Center, visit art.ou.edu. For accommodations, call (405) 325-5939.