Pose | Repose gathers artworks from the South Dakota Art Museum Collections that depict human faces and figures. Featured portraits depict subjects posed intentionally with direct gazes, symbolic objects, and telling wardrobes. Other works reveal subjects in repose or in motion, underlining moments of our universal connectedness through posture.

Primarily gleaned from the Museum’s Collections, these artworks reveal the human form as depicted by many of South Dakota’s most important artists, including Ada Caldwell, Milton Kudlacek, Robert Lee Penn, Melvin Spinar, and Martin Wanserski. A significant number of pieces on display are by two of South Dakota’s most renowned artists, illustrator Harvey Dunn and Yanktonai artist Oscar Howe, including two loaned works: Dunn’s Dakota Woman from the Dakota Wesleyan University collection and Howe’s Woman Scalp Dancer from a private collector.

Further, works like Stephen Briggs’ Central American photograph of a sleeping figure and Bryan Holland’s portrait of a European courtesan supersede the geographical and cultural constraints of the Midwest region. Others, such as pieces by Alice Neel and Alex Katz, reflect more modern practices and contemporary sensibilities while demonstrating broader representation within the Museum’s Collections.