photo by: Ryan Waggoner, KU's Spencer Museum of Art

Installation view of the new exhibition at KU's Spencer Museum of Art, “Soundings: Making Culture at Sea.” The exhibit is currated by Emily Casey and Celka Straughn to showcase artistic representations of the ocean, and the exhibit highlights connections to KU.

KU’s Spencer Museum of Art may be hundreds of miles away from the nearest ocean, but a new exhibit there is meant to explore all kinds of ways humans relate to the sea.

The new exhibit, titled “Soundings: Making Culture at Sea,” will be on display until Dec. 14 at the museum at 1301 Mississippi St. It’s divided into several sections about humans’ experiences with the ocean — such as crossing it, mapping it and living alongside it — as well as the ecological threats that oceans face today.

Some of the highlights of the exhibit include the late-period Winslow Homer watercolor painting “West India Divers” and a life-sized carved wooden mermaid that once served as an advertising sign above a 19th-century seaside supply shop.

Emily Casey, an assistant professor and one of the curators, said in a news release that the exhibit draws from her research of American art and culture, including how people imagined and represented the ocean around the time of the American Revolution. She said that even in a landlocked place like Kansas, there are still connections to the ocean, and the exhibit was meant to highlight them.

Among those connections, the release cites the photographs of Greenland’s glaciers that are part of the exhibit. It notes that the namesake of KU’s Dyche Hall, Lewis Lindsay Dyche, was a naturalist who took part in expeditions to Greenland.

“(T)here were people who explored maritime spaces who have connections to KU,” Casey said in the release. “Dyche is an example.”