Sumner Normal at HSSU (Miss Othmar)

2026 On view

Harris Stowe State University Admin Building

DetailsDecommissioned parachute

Address 3026 Laclede Ave
St. Louis, MO

Site Description

Accessibility: The artwork is located on a flagpole on the Harris Stowe State University Campus and is accessible from sunrise to sunset.

Artwork Details

Timmy Simonds is a New York City–based artist whose work moves between sculpture, performance, writing, and teaching. For Counterpublic, Simonds continues an ongoing work, Miss Othmar School for Teachers, an imagined school without students that asks the question: What is teaching beyond the transfer of informational knowledge, as an embodied activity? Simonds’ works for Counterpublic create beacons for a dispersed teaching community and attempt to uncover material of the school, Stowe Teachers College (1890-1954)—the first Black teachers college west of the Mississippi River— largely limited to a fading oral history without a centralized archive. Various related works are installed around The Ville and on the campus of Harris Stowe State University. A series of wind-activated flag sculptures is installed outside the historic schools to tell the story of a shared educational history. Each flag, shaped like pants or an ambulating lower body are made from used parachute material with colors matching the spirit colors of Stowe Teachers College at different moments of it’s history. Limited to black-and-white photographs and material from related histories, Simonds attempted to re-imagine what the colors and school emblems might have looked like.

The locations of these works include the historic sites of this school: Sumner High School (Normal Department and Sumner Teachers College, 1890–1929), Simmons Elementary School (Stowe’s laboratory school, 1929–1940), Turner Middle School (the purpose-built Stowe Teachers College, 1940–1954), and Harris–Stowe State University.

This project is additionally supported by Alexander Clark, Ian Harris, Noah Robbins & Felicity Sargent.

01 Timmy Simonds