The Shumla School is actively involved in community outreach and public education through the production and installation of museum exhibits. Each exhibit promotes the mission of our organization and dramatically illustrates the human use of art in prehistory.

Archive Exhibits

Art and Artifacts from Millennia Past

Art and Artifacts from Millennia Past is an exhibit illustrating a cross-cultural comparison of hunter-gatherer material culture and rock paintings of South Texas, southern Africa, and northern Mexico. Dr. Carolyn Boyd, Executive Director of the Shumla School, and her students from Texas A&M University, designed the exhibit, as well as educational packets and curricula for K–12 schools that featured hands-on activities, such as paint making, weaving, crosswords puzzles and word searches. The exhibit ran from February 19–May 31, 2000 at the Brazos Valley Museum of Natural History in Bryan, Texas. From there, it traveled to the Townhouse Gallery, a small museum in Sistersville, West Virginia where it opened on August 4, 2000. The Ray C. Fish Foundation, Houston, Texas, provided funding for the exhibit.

Drawing from the Past

Drawing From the Past: Rock Art of the Texas Hinterlands was on exhibit at the J. Wayne Stark University Center Galleries at Texas A&M University from October 11–December 16, 2001. With stunningly beautiful displays of prehistoric art, the exhibition focused upon the 4,000 year-old rock paintings found in the lower Pecos River region of Texas and the methods used by Dr. Carolyn Boyd to interpret these previously silent images. This area provided shelter to the region's prehistoric inhabitants for at least 10,000 years. All that is known of these ancient peoples has been learned through studying the art and artifacts they left behind.

Here's Looking at You

Developed by the Shumla School, the Texas A&M University Department of Anthropology, and the Brazos Valley Museum, Here's Looking At You showcases traditional dance and ritual masks from Mexico, China, the Northwest Coast of North America, West Africa, and New Guinea. Most of the masks are on loan by local collectors Jon and Letitia Alston. The New Guinea masks and associated ritual artifacts come from the Sepik River collection at the Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University. This exhibition highlights the beauty of these masks, their ethnographic significance, and touches on such important themes as the diversity of cultural and religious expression and the representation of the human personality through art. The exhibit was on display at the Brazos Valley Museum of Natural History from April 9–August 31, 2002.