Meditation in the Museum

An art museum in Norman will hold a free, guided meditation session for all students of the University of Oklahoma Monday evening in a local museum gallery.

Meditation in the Museum is held on every Monday in October and that final session will be held on Monday, October 25 at 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.

It will take place at Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, in the Sandy Bell Gallery located on the ground level of the museum.

The meditations are guided by Surya Pierce, a physician at OU’s Goddard Medical Center. Pierce also teaches at the Ashtanga Yoga Studio in Norman.

The meditation is meant to help students who aspire to release artistic tension, or to students who want to learn more about the practice of meditation.

“Meditation is a way of quieting the mind,” said Susan Baley, the director of education for Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art. “Spending time being still can help students manage stress and enhance their powers of concentration and creativity.”

This event was inspired by Surya Pierce, who looked to meditation as a way to clear the mind in a similar way that artists purged their paintings of representational subject matter, according to the museum’s website.

It was planned in connection with the exhibition “Macrocosm/Microcosm: Abstract Expressionism in the American Southwest.”

For more information about Meditation in the Museum, contact Michael Bendure, the program assistant for the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art at mbendure@ou.edu.