Unexpected Company
101 Archer South Gallery
May 1 – June 27
The Oklahoma Center for the Humanities is pleased to feature Musonium Grand Prize Award winner Andrea Kowch’s “Unexpected Company,” as well as works by Cherokee Nation artist Richard D. York, in the South Gallery on May 1st during the First Friday Art Crawl.
Andrea Kowch is an internationally recognized American painter whose work in magical realism has earned her widespread acclaim across major museums, galleries, and global publications. A graduate of the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, where she earned her BFA summa cum laude with High Honors, Kowch has built a distinguished career defined by evocative, narrative-driven paintings that bridge the real and the surreal.
Kowch’s work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, most recently Mysterious Realms at the Museum of Art – DeLand (2023), a sweeping retrospective that solidified her place among leading contemporary figurative painters. Her paintings have also been exhibited widely in prestigious group exhibitions, including Truthful Illusions: Realism in the Age of Abstraction at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art (2025) and Transcending Tradition: Selected Works from The Bennett Collection of Women Realists at the Muskegon Museum of Art (2025). These exhibitions highlight her continued relevance in conversations surrounding contemporary realism and narrative painting.
Her achievements have been recognized at the highest levels internationally. Kowch was awarded the Grand Prize in the global Keller Prize in 2025 and the Musonium Grand Prize at the Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize in 2024, both distinctions awarded to a single artist worldwide. These honors underscore the exceptional impact and singular vision of her work within the global art community.
Kowch’s paintings are held in significant public collections, including the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, the Muskegon Museum of Art, the Grand Rapids Art Museum, and The Bennett Collection of Women Realists. Her work is also widely collected privately across North America, Europe, Australia, and Turkey, reflecting an expansive international reach.
In addition to her exhibition record, Kowch’s work has been extensively featured in major art publications such as American Art Collector, Fine Art Connoisseur, Hi-Fructose, and Forbes. A major monograph, Across a Rural Skyline: The Art of Andrea Kowch, published in 2025, further cements her influence and documents her evolving practice.
Through her psychologically charged and symbolically rich paintings, Kowch continues to expand the boundaries of contemporary magical realism, crafting timeless narratives that explore the complexities of human experience, memory, and the natural world.
Richard D. York, is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. Richard currently lives in Sequoyah County within the Cherokee Nation reservation. He earned his BFA with a dual emphasis in painting and photography in 1996 from Boise State University. In 2014 Richard completed his MFA in Visual Studies at Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) – a studio art degree with a primary emphasis on studio painting and a focus on Pedagogy and Theory. He works in a wide variety of media including oil, acrylic, watercolor, digital media, and he also crafts a variety of traditional Native items..
York received a MFA Merit Scholarship (2012–2014) while attending PNCA. In 2013 he was selected for the Caldera MFA residency. His work has been featured in The Art of the West Exhibit at the High Desert Museum in Bend, Oregon (2019, 2020, 2021, 2024). He was awarded the LIFT Award from the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation in 2021. In 2022, he was one of five Native artists in the United States selected by Google to design Chrome themes and Chromebook wallpapers for Native American Heritage Month. In 2024 Richard received The Artists in Business Leadership Fellowship from First Peoples Fund. Currently, Richard also works for Cherokee Nation Cultural and Economic Development as a Historical Interpreter.
This exhibit runs May 1 – June 27, at UTulsa’s 101 Archer in the South Gallery. Our galleries are open Wednesdays through Saturdays from noon until 5 p.m. Special closures for private events will be announced on our social media pages. As always, admission is free.