Stuff of Thought presents a new body of work exploring “sacred pause,” a concept rooted in Buddhist philosophy describing the moment between thoughts where awareness becomes possible. Sacred pause is the brief interval between stimulus and response, the space in which we can notice our reactions before they unfold automatically. It is a chance to be present with our thoughts and to examine, rather than simply enact, our interpretations of a situation. This work extends an earlier inquiry into schemas, the way past experience and cultural conditioning shape our responses before we are even aware of choosing them. Sacred pause interrupts that pattern, opening a small but significant gap between habit and choice.
August 7 – October 2, 2026
Li Montalvo, Stuff of Thought
October 10 – November 20, 2026
Voices and Votes: Democracy in America
Coming to the Prindle Institute in Fall 2026, Voices and Votes: Democracy in America explores nearly 250 years of the nation’s ongoing experiment in self-government. Developed by the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum on Main Street in partnership with Indiana Humanities, this interactive exhibition invites visitors to reflect on the freedoms, struggles, and responsibilities that define civic life. Through historical artifacts, multimedia installations, and stories of revolution, suffrage, protest, and reform, Voices and Votes asks how each generation shapes and reshapes democracy. Presented in collaboration with the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics, the Putnam County Museum, the Greencastle League of Women Voters, and the Putnam County Public Library, this national touring exhibit transforms the Institute into a gathering place for reflection, conversation, and community action.
INTERACTIVE EXPERIENCE
The Trolley Lab
The Trolley Lab invites visitors to build track layouts with a wooden train set and work through variations of a classic philosophical puzzle: the Trolley Problem. Visitors will think through who gets affected, whether acting differs from letting things happen, and whether it matters if you know someone on the tracks. A companion digital interactive guides users through each scenario, letting them record their reasoning and compare answers with others, while a response wall gathers everyone’s thinking into an ongoing record of how people reason through fairness and consequence. Open to all ages, with facilitated discussion sessions available for school and student groups and a digitally guided version open during regular Institute hours.
ALWAYS ON VIEW
The Permanent Collection
2009, oil on canvas
Light Puddles
Barbara Fields Timm, professor of art at DePauw University, traces deep family roots to the campus, her grandparents met here in the 1920s, and both her mother and brother are alumni. After completing her graduate studies in Philadelphia, she returned to Indiana to teach, paint, and study the land that shaped her.
Just beyond DePauw’s campus lies an old limestone quarry, once scarred by decades of blasting and later transformed by time and renewal into what is now the DePauw Nature Park. In Light Puddles, Timm captures the interplay of light, water, and sky as nature reclaims what industry left behind. The work reflects her fascination with regeneration and the ever-changing rhythms of the natural world, a place, as she describes it, “never singular, never still.”
1998, textile construction
Ituri Series: BIRA
Martha Donovan Opdahl has worked professionally in fiber arts since earning her M.F.A. from Indiana University’s Hope School of Fine Art in 1985. After establishing her studio in Greencastle, with a winter studio in Santa Fe, she served as curator of the DePauw Art Collection and gallery director of the Emison Art Center before dedicating herself fully to her art in 1998.
Opdahl’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and is held in major public and private collections, including the Mint Museum, the Museum of Art and Design in Washington, D.C., and the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Rooted in her life and work in Greencastle, Ituri Series: BIRA reflects her enduring fascination with texture, rhythm, and the natural forms that connect landscape and craft.
2008, photography collection
Meanderings: Landscapes
Meanderings is a permanent collection of photographs by Cynthia O’Dell, Professor of Art in Photography and Video and Digital Imaging at DePauw University. Commissioned by the Institute’s founding director, Robert G. Bottoms, the series captures the quiet beauty and layered history of the DePauw Nature Park, once a limestone quarry, now a place of reflection and renewal.
O’Dell, a member of the DePauw faculty since 1998 and former chair of the Art Department, explores themes of identity, memory, and place in her work. Through her lens, the Nature Park becomes a site of both personal and environmental contemplation, a landscape where light, loss, and transformation coexist.
2017-2025, various
Student Works from Express CAMP
At Express CAMP, art isn’t just an activity, it’s crucial to our pedagogy. This joyful collection of student work showcases how our campers explore big ethical ideas through hands-on, collaborative making. From embroidered panels stitched in conversation to mobiles that balance differing perspectives, from stacked totems of shared inquiry to medallions expressing unique identities, each piece reflects our core belief: that thinking deeply and creating freely go hand in hand. These works are colorful, textured testaments to the power of art to spark dialogue, celebrate difference, and build community.
The current collection includes: Selves Together (2017), Totems (2018), Untitled (2022), Equilibrium (2024) and The Climb (2025). All projects were conceived as mini-lessons for Express CAMP by local artist and educator Dessa Frank.
