Dean Mitchell the Museum of Art + Light (MoA+L) in Manhattan, Kansas is s currently spotlighting the work of Dean Mitchell through two concurrent major exhibitions that honor over 40 years of his artistic achievement .
- Heritage & the Human Condition, a sweeping retrospective from August 20, 2025 through March 8, 2026, showcasing in a traditional wall-hung show, over 50 paintings, prints, and drawings spanning Mitchell’s 40‑year career, giving audiences the chance to see his art in its original form.
Sam and Dolly
1995
Oil on panel
30 × 48 in.
- The Erosion of Time, an immersive digital exhibition running from September 6, 2025 through April 30, 2026, produced in collaboration with Des Lucréce, combining Mitchell’s artwork with large‑scale digital storytelling technology that animates and adds movement and duration to the imagery of the artists. It augments the storytelling of the art and makes life, as the artists see it, larger than life.
These twin exhibitions mark Mitchell’s first ever comprehensive retrospective, complemented by his debut in immersive digital storytelling . The pairing of Mitchell’s expressive figurative work with modern digital media sets a bold new precedent for museums in combining traditional and contemporary modes of visual narrative.
The Erosion of Time showcases Mitchell’s rich body of paintings, prints and drawings of rural and urban environments, portraits and still lifes, portraying enduring values of roads traveled along with personal narratives.
Mitchell’s hopes for humanity, through his experiences and observations of the world around him, deserts, plains and open skies. Here, the immersive space stretches out into an endless horizon. The viewer is surrounded by layered projections of Mitchell’s most expansive scenes sun-bleached deserts, dry fields, distant mesas stitched together to form an imaginary landscape where time feels frozen. A reminder of the timelessness and spiritual weight of the American terrain as seen through Mitchell’s eyes.
Watch presentation by MoA+L