Sharp Museum

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Last Updated: Apr 03, 2025, 11:05 AM

About Our Museum

First opened as a natural history museum in 1874, the Sharp Museum at Southern Illinois University Carbondale has evolved into a teaching museum that represents the humanities, the sciences and the arts. While our focus is on southern Illinois, our humanities collection includes ethnographic materials that allow us to share the world with a diverse campus and a region that is isolated from urban centers. With roughly 70,000 objects in our care, the Sharp Museum captures and illuminates the human story, opening a window on who we are and where we came from.

MUSEUM HOURS

Tuesday - Friday: Noon - 4pm
Saturday: 1pm - 4pm
Sunday & Monday: Closed

Free and open to all.

The Sharp Museum is closed to the public during all SIU breaks and holidays.

Public metered parking available across from the Student Center and beside Woody Hall.

Exhibits

South Hall

  • Rosanna Sharp Gallery
    Selections from Sharp Museum Collection
    Ongoing
    This spring, we spotlight works by well-known artists like Josef Albers, Salvador Dali, Richard Hunt, Stephen Pace, Gabor Peterdi, Andy Warhol, and others from our collection.

  • Lutes Gallery
    European Painting, Sculpture, and Decorative Arts
    Ongoing
    This exhibition highlights paintings, sculptures, tapestries, and furniture from Renaissance Europe selected from the collection of Carl W. Lutes.

  • Saluki Gallery
    Nicolas Blair: Castro to Christopher, Gay Streets of America 1979 - 1986
    April 11th – September 27, 2025
    Blair documented the narrow window of time between 1979 and 1986, after Stonewall and before the worst days of the AIDS epidemic, when there was a period of giddy, blossoming gay life in places often seen as "gay paradises." San Francisco’s Castro District, New York’s Christopher Street and Fire Island, and Provincetown, Massachusetts, were best known. If the shadow of AIDS were not lingering over these photographs, it would be as though they were showing us an alternate universe where full legal equality for LGBTQ people could have come much sooner. These historic images encapsulate some of the few places in America where, for the very first time and very brief while, it was OK to be gay.

  • West Gallery
    Queer Stories, Queer Spaces: Southern Illinois Histories and Queertographies
    April 4th – October 31, 2025
    Two years of loving effort went into researching, compiling, and designing this exhibit. Hear the rich oral histories, experience the collective memories on display, and learn the facts and figures of our local queer community with an emphasis on the greater Carbondale Area in the ‘70s and ‘80s. We encourage visitors to leave their queer histories in the Story Booth to become part of our Special Collection Research Center.

  • Hall of Art
     Monica Turner: The Way Out is In Deeper
    April 18th – May 31, 2025
    Turner focuses on constructing environments that simulate memories of moments in time when it felt like the space the viewer was inhabiting was not made for them, or does not want them there, or both. Examples of the places described would be the back of an industrial warehouse, a poorly lit basement hallway, or a thoroughly used home that isn’t your own. Turner’s pieces use forced perspective and a combative relationship with gravity to disorient the viewer and utilize highly saturated colors to give a heightened sense of reality.

  • Study Gallery
    What is Anthropology? ANTH104 UnEssay Projects
    February 18th – May 10th, 2025
    Anthropology is, in its broadest sense, the study of what it means to be human. This can take many forms: studying present-day societies, digging up the past, learning how language shapes culture (and vice versa), and learning who we are from a biological perspective. Perhaps most importantly, anthropology can be a lens, a way to interpret the world we live in and the systems we’ve created, and think about why these were created and how they can be different. In ANTH104, students are encouraged to look around their world with an anthropological lens. Their final isn’t a traditional exam or paper but a project, an UnEssay. Students can propose any sort of project to demonstrate their knowledge gained: a business proposal, independent research, or a video for social media. These examples showcase both the depth of anthropology and the breadth of Saluki creativity.

  • Dr. Cho-Yee To International Gallery
    Scrollwork and Decoration
    Ongoing
    This semester, we highlight artifacts and scrolls from our Dr. Cho-Yee To collection, including an ink block from the Song Dynasty and three Katsushika Hokusai woodblock prints.

The Sharp Museum's online collections have moved to a new home. Our digital exhibitions and recorded artist's talks can be found on the Resources page through the main navigation menu.