OMA Award Spotlight - Decorative Arts Center of Ohio
Recognizing excellence in Ohio museums during Arts and Humanities Month
To help celebrate October as Arts and Humanities Month, and to kick-off the call for nominations for this year's OMA awards, we'll be highlighting our 2023 OMA Award of Achievement winners throughout the month with our OMA Award Spotlight. We are featuring these Award Winner Spotlights during Arts and Humanities Month to help champion the amazing projects, programs and professionals that make Ohio's museum community strong.
The Awards of Achievement are presented to reflect the outstanding quality and caliber of work by Ohio museums and their professionals in two categories: Institutional Achievement Awards and Individual Achievement Awards.
Nominations for these awards are incredibly detailed. This in-depth process helps to illustrate how these institutions and individuals have gone “above and beyond” the normal call of duty to support their institution, serve their public and advance the cause of the museum community.
Each year, the review panel is overwhelmed by the outstanding projects, innovative programming and dedication to our field as exhibited in each of the institutional and individual nominations. Congratulations again to each of our 2023 award winners!
Today, we'll be featuring our winner for the 2023 award for Best Exhibition over $500,000.
Decorative Arts Center of Ohio -It's an Honor to Be Here: Ohio Nature Artists in their Natural State
Ohio finds itself at the confluence of four major natural land regions. This rich biological diversity was explored and celebrated in the Decorative Arts Center of Ohio’s exhibit, It’s an Honor to Be Here: Ohio Nature Artists in Their Natural State.
This exhibit featured forty contemporary Ohio-based artists from all corners of the state and over 20 counties, many for the first time in a professional museum setting. These artists shared their interpretations of the breadth of nature that surrounds us all and shared stories to inspire curiosity and respect for the natural world in a new generation of creators and environmental stewards.
It’s an Honor to Be Here included a range of media, from traditional painting to taxidermy, paper sculpture, video and fiber arts, and highlighted the diversity of Ohio’s natural wonders and the human expressions that honor the natural world.
This exhibit brought over 2,500 visitors through DACO’s doors during its three-month run, and thousands more through related virtual content - reaching visitors from across the region, including many new audiences like hunters, naturalists, science professionals, and general nature enthusiasts.
Many of the lessons learned during the last several years of COVID were used to increase DACO’s access to those who were unable to make it physically through our doors - creating virtual offerings, such as professionally recorded curator programming platformed on YouTube, increasing use of strategic social media posts, and a partnership with a local vendor to provide Google street-style virtual tours through all of the exhibition spaces in the museum.
Amanda Everitt, executive director of Destination Downtown Lancaster wrote, “For many of our residents, ‘art museums’ are not normally places they see themselves in or feel comfortable entering. But, I believe having an exhibition that featured both professional and amateur artists and included pieces ranging from paintings and photography to duck decoys and taxidermy served to draw many people through the museum doors who might otherwise feel excluded from such experiences.”
Did your museum have a spectacular exhibit - virtual or physical - during the 2024 season? Be sure to nominate it for the 2024 award for Best Exhibition! Learn more here.