NORMAN AKERS
Gallery
Dripping World, oil on canvas, 78” x 68”
Norman Akers was born and raised in Fairfax, Oklahoma. He is a citizen of the Osage Nation from Grayhorse District. He received a BFA in Painting from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1982, and a Certificate in Museum Studies from the Institute of American Indian Arts in 1983. In 1991, he received a MFA in Fine Arts from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
Akers had solo exhibitions at the Lawrence Arts Center, Lawrence, Kansas,
Jan Cicero Gallery in Chicago, Illinois, and the Gardner Art Gallery, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, Oklahoma. He has participated in numerous group exhibitions including, Mapping: Motion and Memory in Contemporary Art, Katonah Museum, Katonah, New York, Unlimited Boundaries, The Dichotomy of Place in Contemporary Native American Art, Albuquerque Museum, Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Who Stole the Tee Pee?, at the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Museum, New York, New York.
His paintings are in several collections including the Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, Oklahoma, Rockwell Museum, Corning, New York, Heard Museum, Phoenix, Arizona, Eiteljorg Museum, Indianapolis, Indiana, National Museum of the American Indian, Washington DC, and Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico.
In 2007 he was selected to participate in the “We Are All Knots” print project, sponsored by the National Museum of the American Indian and ART in the Embassies Program Print Series. He was a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Grant in 1999.
Norman Akers previously taught painting and drawing at the Institute of American Indian Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In 2009 he accepted a teaching position at the University of Kansas where he is currently an Associate Professor of Painting and Drawing.