Dacotah Gallery

The Dacotah Gallery on the Museum's second floor is a small gallery in which we showcase our smaller-scale treasures.

Now Showing:

Dakota Dreams
(through June 6, 2013)

Aberdeen artist, Israel Mickelson, has opened a photography exhibit of energetic natural images entitled “Dakota Dreams” at the Dacotah Prairie  Museum. The exhibition opened on April 10 and will remain open until June 6th, 2013. Mickelson’s photographs are on 2nd floor in the Dacotah Gallery space.

A reception will be hosted by Israel Mickelson on Sunday, April 21st from 2-4:00pm at the Museum which is free and the public is welcome.  Come meet the artist and refreshments will be served.

Mickelson was born and raised in Aberdeen, although he has also lived in New York City and northern California. His interest in photography was first piqued during his job on a cruise ship in the Caribbean. Inspired by the breathtaking vistas, he recorded as many images as he could to share with friends and family. Since that experience, Israel has kept his camera as a perpetual companion, recording the elegance of the natural world as seen through a keen observer’s eye. 

Crossing the United States several times since his high school graduation in 2002, Mickelson’s  portfolio has expanded to include a wide gambit of weather, land, and animals/birds captured in photos. The eighteen photographs in “Dakota Dreams” focus on likenesses familiar to most of the state’s residents. They present an intimate vision of back-lit cloud formations, leaping deer frozen in motion, deserted and weathered houses, and delicate speckled eggs wrapped in a down filled nest of twigs.

From a drowsy squirrel lounging on a branch to the jeweled eyes of a dragonfly to the complexity of layered orange fungus sprouting from a tree trunk, the photographs here provide familiar glimpse into our home state where we exist in harmony with the natural world that surrounds us. Mickelson’s photographs are unplanned and unstaged which preserves the natural intimacy of their appeal. Come and enjoy the photography at the Museum and become part of “Dakota Dreams”.

For information on past exhibits in the Dacotah Gallery, please click here.