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Victoria Goro-Rapoport page 22

artland | 1 in Brief

Director’s Forum: Jorge Daniel Veneciano table of contents 2

3 Civic Minds: Governor Dave Heineman

artland 5 Art Patrons: Kathy and Marc LeBaron

spring 2012 7 Regional News

11 People on the Move Publisher The Sheldon Museum of Art Founding Editor Jorge Daniel Veneciano In Memory Editor 46 Greg Nosan Managing Editor Ann Gradwohl Assistant Managing Editor 49 Contributors Eileen Chalupa Boehmer Editorial Advisory Board Mason Burbach, Director, West Nebraska Arts Center, Scottsbluff Julie Jacobson, Chair, Nebraska Arts Council Board, and Director, Creativity Unlimited, North Platte Casey Logan, Film Streams, Omaha aT Length Brigitte McQueen, Director, Union for Contemporary Art, Omaha Hesse McGraw, Curator, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha Andy Norman, Executive Director, and Editor-in-Chief, HearNebraska.org, Lincoln Teliza V. Rodriguez, Curator, Museum of Nebraska Art, Kearney 12 Artist: Binh Danh Contributing Editors Sarah Baker-Hansen, Rhonda Garelick, Peggy Jones, Michael Krainak, Hesse McGraw, Pamela S. Thompson, L. Kent Wolgamott Editorial Consultants Pamela S. Thompson, Patty Beutler 16 Collector: Phillip Schrager Design Quentin Lueninghoener, University Communications, University of Nebraska–Lincoln Advertising Sales Eileen Chalupa Boehmer, (402) 472-5883; [email protected] 22 Portfolio: Victoria Goro-Rappaport The publication of artland by the Sheldon Museum of Art has been made possible through a grant by the Woods Charitable Fund. Additional funding has been provided by a special programs endowment established for the Sheldon Museum by the Ethel S. Abbott Charitable Foundation. Operations of the Sheldon Museum of Art are supported by the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. General program support is provided by the Sheldon Art 32 Conservation: Kenneth Bé Association. Number One, Spring 2012. artland is published semiannually, in the spring and fall. Content copyright © 2012 Sheldon Museum of Art. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any Author: Janis Londraville and Richard Londraville means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, without permission in writing from 34 the Sheldon Museum of Art. All photography and artwork courtesy of the artists unless stated here: page 17 © 2012 Omaha World-Herald. Send all correspondence to artland Sheldon Museum of Art P.O. Box 880300 40 Art in Motion: Charles Fairbanks Lincoln, NE 68588-0300 402-472-2461

Printed by Jacob North Companies, Lincoln, Nebraska artland will be indexed by ARTbibliographies 44 Curator: Brandon Ruud

It is the policy of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln not to discriminate based upon age, race, ethnicity, color, national origin, gender, sex, pregnancy, disability, sexual orientation, genetic information, veteran’s status, marital status, religion or political affiliation.

2 | artland artland | 1 Director’s forum

civic minds Jorge Daniel Veneciano, Sheldon Museum of Art Governor Dave Heineman

Allow me to introduce artland in five arts; advocate for the relevance of the its streets. To be shared, art needs to perspectives. arts; provide a forum for voices from be articulated. That is why artland has around the state; report on the art world come into being: to create a forum for The Picture of Nebraska; carry out the University of sharing the arts. Interview by Jorge Daniel Veneciano Fly over Nebraska in the fall and you Nebraska’s mission in teaching, service, The Praise see quadrants laced with watercolor and research—which we do with I wish to thank the supportive ribbons of green and brown, tracing the educational content, statewide service, and forward-thinking people at the soft contours of farmland. The land itself and original interviews. becomes a work of art. Woods Charitable Fund, who believe We thank Governor Dave Heineman for Nebraska is dotted with towns The Plan in the power of the arts to better our taking time to answer a few questions scattered across the flat and rolling artland offers its pages to the communities, and who extended about the role of the arts in Nebraska. prairies. Many are small—with big miles people of Nebraska—to artists, arts financial support to the realization Jorge Daniel Veneciano: In your travels between them. Weaving them into the organizations, and educators, who of this magazine. We are especially around the country, what do you tell social fabric of Nebraska is a shared submit their stories and interviews about grateful to the Ethel S. Abbott Charitable people about the arts in Nebraska? people, projects, and places across the Foundation for its endowment grant culture of integrity, hard work, and Governor Dave Heineman: I let them state. We host exchanges of information in support of special programs at the pride. Art is another big part of our state know that Nebraska has a long tradition and reflection, and thereby create Sheldon Museum of Art, of which this culture—always, at minimum, etched in the arts and that we are committed into the land itself. This is artland. conversations. To heighten the dialogue, magazine is an important example. I also wish to thank the original to promoting the arts and educating our Nebraska is rich in literature, film, we emphasize the interview format. artland team: Greg Nosan and Sarah citizens about the arts. drama, television, music, performance artland will be a semiannual print Baker-Hansen. Greg, who is also JDV: And you’ve made room for an art and the visual arts. Like roads and rail publication, released in the spring director of education and publications gallery in the Governor’s Residence to lines, the magazine will link communities, and fall. It will also feature an online at the Sheldon, continues to elevate prove your point! We’d like our readers and, in the process, create greater complement (to be developed later) the editorial style and organizational to know a little bit about your own community among the arts in Nebraska. containing extended interviews and capacity of artland; “Sarah-B,” alas, visual arts program at the Governor’s This is artland. images not available in the print version. has moved to the Omaha World- Residence. Can you tell us what inspired The Purpose The Philosophy Herald, where her star is certain to you to pursue an art gallery there? Art sustains life. It’s that simple. shine brightly. Quentin Lueninghoener, artland’s mission is to build and DH: Of course. We call it the Nebraska Governor Dave Heinman pictured with Cornhusker State All Star Club Band, a 2011 painting by Art promotes civility. It’s that the brilliant designer of artland, works promote a community of artists and arts Governor’s Residence Exhibition Ralston-based artist Frank Costanzo. The work, along with several of Costanzo’s other canvases, was important. at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln organizations in Nebraska by providing Program. It’s sponsored by the Nebraska on display in March at the Governor’s Residence in Lincoln. a print and online forum for dialogue and Art invites problem-solving. It’s that communications office, to which we are transferrable. also grateful. I thank Pamela Thompson, Arts Council and provides a venue for JDV: So we should have no secrets in Attend: Concerts, plays, museums, First news. We want to capture the best of Nebraska artists to display their work. Nebraska in expected and unexpected Art stirs the soul. It’s that fundamental. whose considerable magazine the arts. What would you say, then, is Friday walks. We understand the deep relevance experience helped us complete this This allows every citizen and visitor your vision for the future of the arts in ways, and we envision the magazine the opportunity to acknowledge and Support: Private donations are vital for as a national model for statewide art has in the life of individuals and inaugural issue. Ann Gradwohl and Nebraska? the survival of the arts. societies. Art can live as easily on Eileen Boehmer, our newest team appreciate the diversity of the visual cooperation in arts advocacy. DH: Education is one of my top priorities Volunteer: Most of these organizations in sidewalks as it can on gallery walls. members, are bringing new energy artists in our state. and providing our students with the our state are operated by volunteers. The Point Visit North Platte, for example, to see and enthusiasm to the magazine; we JDV: And in looking around the state, best education possible is essential to JDV: We should hang a banner with These pages celebrate people in the the colorfully tiled obelisks that brighten welcome them aboard. what would you say is one of Nebraska’s Nebraska’s future. The arts are crucial that response on it! Finally, what are you well-kept secrets in the arts? to providing a comprehensive education particularly proud of in the state? DH: You know, you don’t have to live to our students. Our state’s educators in Omaha or Lincoln to enjoy the arts— are doing an excellent job of promoting DH: I’m proud of the strong arts opportunities are available all across the the importance of arts education in our education in our schools. Our children Who named the magazine? state. The Sheldon Museum of Art has schools, colleges, and universities. are exposed to performing opportunities and arts appreciation courses as part of a traveling exhibition program, so does JDV: Nebraskans have greatly benefited We had an online competition to name the magazine. The winner is Kelley Heider, who was an MA student in the a well-rounded curriculum. That is often the Lied Center for Performing Arts, and by your support of education—we’re humanities at the University of Chicago working as an intern at the university’s Smart Museum of Art when she ran across where the love of the arts begins. the announcement of the contest to name Sheldon’s magazine. A native of Grand Island, who grew up in Omaha, Kelley was there’s also the Prairie Visions program. all happy to note. Now, how can particularly drawn to the call for entries from the state she still considers home. There are wonderful community theaters, Nebraskans themselves best support the JDV: So true. And love of the arts Kelley is currently Marketing Manager of the Journals Division of the University of Chicago Press. About her yearlong community choirs, museums, and our arts in our sate? returns as love of civic institutions. Thank you for sharing with us your thoughts on internship at the Smart Museum, Kelley says, “It reignited my passion for the arts, which will continue for the rest of my life. Even colleges and universities offer plays and DH: It’s a three-pronged answer: now, I’m looking for more ways to be involved locally. For me, interning at a museum was a completely fulfilling experience.” concerts on a regular basis. this facet of civic life in Nebraska.

2 | artland artland | 3 art patrons LeBarons Kathy & Marc

By Laura Reznicek

Governor’s Arts Awards 2012 The biennial Governor’s Arts Awards recognize those who shape Nebraska’s artistic landscape. The impact of the arts, and these honorees, is felt in the classroom, the economy, and the community—they drive Nebraska forward. We celebrate their achievements and recognize the power of the arts in improving Nebraska. The following Nebraska individuals and organizations will receive awards in 2012. Thomas C. Woods III Partner in the Arts: Kathy and Marc LeBaron Marc and Kathy LeBaron and Joan Squires

Kathy and Marc LeBaron don’t just This common interest enticed them to Emerging Leader: Splendid things. collect art: they integrate it into their build an artists’ studio in Puerto Vallarta, Anne Trumble daily lives, and more importantly, the Mexico, where they invite artists for lives of those they touch. residencies. Kathy and Marc have in turn Excellence in Arts Education: Kathy is the past president of the become mentors to others, helping to Connie Dillow board of trustees for the Sheldon Art inspire a new generation of arts patrons. and Donald D. Ruleaux Association, the nonprofit support Their business, Lincoln Industries, is organization for the Sheldon Museum well known for a corporate culture that Heritage Arts: of Art. She and Marc have provided focuses on learning and development, African Culture Connection financial support for Sheldon exhibitions workplace wellness, safety, Sheldon Museum Store and programs, as well as those of the communications, and recognition. Leonard Thiessen: LUX Center for the Arts, the Museum Another way they inspire others is by Catherine and Terry Ferguson 12th and R Streets of Nebraska Art, and other arts exhibiting artwork in the offices and organizations. Marc is the chairman of meeting spaces at Lincoln Industries. Organizational Achievement: At the University of Nebraska–Lincoln the International Sculpture Center and Kathy and Marc LeBaron have made Blue Barn Theatre and serves as president-elect of the board of a difference in our state. They live Tuesday-Saturday: 10:00–5:00 the Nebraska Cultural Endowment. with art, they commit their time to arts Friends of the Midwest The couple would be the first to say organizations in the community, and Theater Sunday: 1:00–4:00 that they were mentored by Karen and they use their resources and talents Closed Monday Robert Duncan, who are also major art to plan for the future of the arts in Outstanding Artist: collectors and supporters of the arts. Nebraska and beyond. Jun Kaneko

artland | 5

Museum Store Ad CYMK.indd 1 3/23/12 2:23 PM Regional news

Nike Belianina, digital levitation photography; Belianina, from Toronto, Canada, conducted a three-week workshop at Kimmel Harding Nelson Nebraska City Center for the Arts in 2011. The Kimmel Harding Nelson Center a permanent collection of artworks, annually. Special consideration is given for the Arts in Nebraska City is proud publications, and media donated to artists with ties to Nebraska or those to celebrate its tenth year of providing by former artists-in-residence. The having recently completed graduate space and uninterrupted time to visual collection, totaling nearly three hundred studies in their discipline. artists, writers, and composers from pieces, can be enjoyed by visitors during The Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for across the country and around the world. normal business hours. This spring, the Arts is a program of the Richard P. Since housing its first resident artist in the visual-art portion of the collection Kimmel and Laurine Kimmel Foundation, February 2002, the center now awards be will available for online viewing Inc, a foundation that supports the arts, nearly sixty residencies annually. Awards on the center’s new website, www. agriculture, and education in the state range in length from two to eight weeks khncenterforthearts.org. of Nebraska and Western Iowa. More and continue to include housing, studio Emerging and established artists information on the foundation can be space, and a weekly stipend for every interested in being part of the Kimmel found at www.kimmelfoundation.org. artist accepted to the program. Harding Nelson’s creative legacy should — Jenni Brant Over the years, the center has built apply online by March 1 or September 1 omaha The Bemis Center, which celebrated residents. In 2012 Bemis will renovate for those spots will be stiff. More than its thirtieth birthday in 2011, unveiled the 10,000-square-foot Okada Building 1,000 artists applied for a spot in the its biggest project to date during across the street from the center. program in 2010, and Masuoka said the yearlong celebration: a major Bemis Director Mark Masuoka hopes he expects a big jump in applicants in renovation of its Old Market building to turn that space into a world-class 2012. The money for the renovation is a at 12th and Leavenworth Streets and studio for artists to create large-scale combination of funds from foundations, a major expansion of its renowned ceramic sculptures. corporations, and individual donors. It artist-in-residence program. The The renovations let Bemis expand its includes funds for programming in the center’s $2.6 million project includes renowned artist-in-residence program new space for the next four years. five new studios for visiting artists and from 24 spots to 36, and competition – Sarah Baker-Hansen omaha One of Omaha’s biggest recent public art projects is expanding its scope. The large-scale installation Stored Potential covers the silos of a vacant grain elevator near the I-80 leading into downtown. Begun in 2010, the series of banners focuses on issues of agriculture, food, and land use. Because the project has been so popular with artists and Stored Potential: Transport(ation), digital concept rendering by Emerging Terrain, Omaha, 2011. residents, phase two, focused on transportation, will be installed in May of dinner at the base of the site, which is the 76,000 vehicles passing it each day 2012. located off Vinton Street near downtown. on the cross-continental Interstate 80. The first part of Stored Potential Phase two will continue the discussion, A few of the new banners are viewable transformed the elevator from eyesore focusing on starting a dialogue about online at http://www.emergingterrain.org/ to conversation piece, and the creators the relationship between the elevator, storedpotential/home/blog/. celebrated its unveiling with an afternoon the citywide hiking trail it terminates, and – Sarah Baker-Hansen

artland | 7 Regional news

North Platte

From September 2007 to late 2011, designed to be illuminated by motion- Creativity Unlimited Arts Council activated, solar-powered lights. The undertook the Community Unity Tile sculptures contain 2,000 tiles, which Project, which used art to inspire were created by over 2,100 individuals. conversation and creative expression The project required hundreds of bottles within North Platte and surrounding of glazes, many hours of firing in kilns, areas. The end result was five towers and countless hours from volunteers that now beautify the city, starting at who managed the program and assisted the I-80 entrance at Veterans Memorial young artists in making a community and continuing to Centennial Park, the time capsule that will inspire future Courthouse Square, Memorial Park, and generations. Cody Park. Sponsors of the initiative include the The nine-foot-tall, obelisk-shaped City of North Platte, Mid-Nebraska towers are covered with square Community Foundation, North Platte/ porcelain tiles, each hand painted Lincoln County Convention and Visitors with scenes of Big Red football, Bureau, North Platte Public Schools, buildings, cowboys, Lincoln County, Lincoln County Commissioners, Original loved ones, Nebraska, North Platte, Town Association, Platte River Mall, and ranches, soldiers, schools, and other Joseph Hewgley and Associates. commemorative images. Each tower is – Julie Jacobson

This tile-covered tower is one of five sponsored by the Creativity Unlimited Arts Council.

Scottsbluff Last summer the West Nebraska The open-studio sessions provided Four 3-hour open-studio sessions are Art Center began opening its gallery an unusual opportunity for adults who scheduled Tuesday nights this April (3, at night for studio drawing sessions. had a basic understanding of drawing 10, 17, and 24 from 8:00 to 11:00 p.m.) The program, called Drawing for techniques and wanted to sharpen Bring your own drawing materials. Cost Insomniacs, was geared to a group of their skills. No formal instruction was for the four sessions is $45 ($35 for local artists who worked full-time jobs provided—instead, artists worked side- WNAC members). Register by phone during the day and needed a creative by-side during fun, friendly, no-pressure at 308-632-2226. Walk-ins are also outlet once their kids were fed and the drawing sessions that featured human welcome. dishes were done. skeletons, live models, and still life. – Mason Burbach

Falls City

The Stalder Gallery, located inside of student art for the local General of Myron Heise from the Museum of the Falls City Library and Arts Center, Federation of Women’s Clubs Art Nebraska Art (June 1–July 14), and has hosted exhibitions by artists such Contest. The 2012 schedule includes Wartime Escape: Margaret and H.A. as Alan Tubach, as well as the Sheldon Commemorations, this year’s Sheldon Rey’s Journey From France from Exhibits Statewide exhibition for the past five Statewide exhibition (April 6–May 7), USA (September 1–October 15). years, and has shown over 600 works Two Kinds of Home: The Life and Works – Chrstina Wertenberger

8 | artland People on the move

Dana Fritz has recently assumed responsibility The Union for Contemporary Art has emerged for the photography program in the Department as a new arts nonprofit thanks largely to of Art and Art History at the University of Founding and Executive Director Brigitte Nebraska–Lincoln, where she serves as McQueen. Brigitte has worked in advertising, Associate Professor. She received a BFA from as a pastry chef, and spent 10 years in Whether it is day or night, inside or Kansas City Art Institute and an MFA from Arizona State publishing as a production manager with Teen People University. She has been awarded artist residencies at Villa magazine. After adopting Omaha as her home in 2006, she out, Joslyn has so much to offer. Montalvo in Saratoga, CA; Chateau de Rochefort-en-Terre in opened a commercial gallery called Pulp and eventually Brittany, France; and Biosphere 2 in Oracle, AZ. Her work is became the manager of the Underground at the Bemis SCULPTURE GARDENS: held in collections including the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art; Art Center for Contemporary Art. Brigitte also serves as a the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; New member of the board of directors for the Kent Bellows Studio Open and free - all day, every day Mexico State University; Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary and Center for Visual Arts and is a member of the community Art; and Bibliothèque Nationale de France. engagement committee for the Joslyn Art Museum. SATURDAY MORNINGS: Now serving as the director of Nebraskans Matthew Sontheimer has joined the University of Nebraska– Free admission, 10 am–noon JOSLYN ART MUSEUM in Omaha has served as a premier for the Arts is Marjorie Maas, a former Lincoln’s Department of Art and Art History as Assistant consultant for small businesses and arts Professor of Painting and Drawing. Sontheimer’s work is center for visual art since opening in 1931. Joslyn’s collection organizations. Marjorie’s career began in concerned with the networks of communication in our daily THURSDAYS: Open ‘til 8 pm! features work from antiquity to the present, with an emphasis marketing for the building-opening team of the lives. The artist received a BFA from Stephen F. Austin State on 19th- and 20th-century European and American art. Mid-America Center in Council Bluffs, and she later worked University and an MFA from Montana State University. His as Public Relations and Promotions Manager for the Omaha work is represented by the Talley Dunn Gallery, in Dallas and ADMISSION: $8 adults; $6 seniors (62+) and college students; Symphony. She recently completed her term as president of the Devin Borden Gallery in Houston, and can be found in $5 ages 5–17; free for Joslyn members and age 4 and younger. Nebraska Shakespeare’s Community Board, serves on the the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the NOWexplore steering committee for Omaha Young Arts Administrators, is a New Orleans Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of Public admitted free every Saturday, 10 am–noon. graduate of Leadership Omaha Class 32, and was recognized American Art, New York. AT HOURS: Tues., Wed., Fri., Sat., 10 am–4 pm; Thurs., 10 am–8 pm; as one of the Ten Outstanding Young Omahans of 2010 by Sun., noon–4 pm. Closed Mondays and major holidays. the Omaha Jaycees. She and her husband have two young Heather Thomas is the new Development children. Officer for the Nebraska Humanities Council, a nonprofit organization serving the state by Since January 2011, Chris Sommerich has promoting an understanding of our history TO LIVE FOREVER: EGYPTIAN THE GREAT WEST CONTESTED TERRAIN: UNDER PRESSURE: led the Nebraska Humanities Council as its and culture. Before joining the NHC, she TREASURES FROM THE ILLUSTRATED: CELEBRATING PAINTING THE MODERN CONTEMPORARY PRINTS FROM Executive Director. Chris has worked for the was the Education Director for the Haydon Art Center. council since 2004. He has both his bachelor’s She is passionate about bringing art and the humanities BROOKLYN MUSEUM 150 YEARS OF THE UNION LANDSCAPE THE COLLECTIONS OF JORDAN and master’s degrees in political science from to the community, especially to youth, through outreach Through June 3, 2012 PACIFIC RAILROAD June 30–September 16, 2012 D. SCHNITZER AND HIS FAMILY the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. In addition to his work programming. Heather has worked in fundraising in the arts, To Live Forever explores the June 30–September 16, 2012 This exhibition includes work from FOUNDATION at the NHC, Chris has served as president and on the board architecture, and historic preservation for the University of Egyptians’ beliefs about life, death, In 1868, the Union Pacific Railroad the past decade by nationally October 6, 2012–January 6, 2013 of directors for the Nebraska Chapter of the Association of Virginia and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. and the afterlife; the process of commissioned photographer recognized landscape painters, Featuring 75 images by artists Fundraising Professionals. Prior to joining the NHC, Chris She serves on the board of the Sheldon Art Association has mummification; the conduct of a Andrew J. Russell to document the whose work addresses our imprint from Jasper Johns and Robert spent four years managing annual giving programs for served on the friends’ board of Pioneers Park Nature Center. Audubon Nebraska. For fifteen years, Chris has played his funeral; and the different types of construction of the transcontinental on the landscape. It complements Rauschenberg to Kara Walker and bass guitar on and off in local Lincoln and Omaha bands. He Bob Reeker and Lorinda Rice, new co-presidents of the tombs. Rather than focusing solely railroad between Omaha and Salt a simultaneous exhibition of Mikalene Thomas, the exhibition and his wife, Vicki, and their two sons, Eli and Benjamin, live Nebraska Art Teachers Association, are both elementary visual on riches discovered in the tombs Lake City, published the following photographs by Andrew J. Russell surveys the major idioms of together in Lincoln. art and integrated technology specialists for Lincoln Public of rulers and nobles, the exhibition year as The Great West Illustrated. and together they show the first contemporary practice over the Schools. Reeker has served on the National Art Education reveals for the first time how non- See prints from this remarkable wave of industrial expansion into past four decades, from hard-edged Association (NAEA) board as Elementary Division Director and currently serves as a trustee on the National Art Education royals prepared for the afterlife. album and other rare Russell the West and some of its unforeseen abstraction to pop, conceptual art, Foundation board. Rice is the NAEA Elementary Division Featuring more than 100 objects, it photographs from this commission, consequences. and recent works addressing race, Western Region Representative and serves elementary art answers questions at the core of our many of which have never been gender, and identity. educators across the Plains; she is also a practicing artist who fascination with ancient Egypt. published or exhibited. exhibits at the Burkholder Project in Lincoln.

2200 Dodge St. | Omaha, NE | (402) 342-3300 | www.joslyn.org artland | 11 artist Binh Danh

Interview by Sharon Kennedy

Sharon Kennedy: You have talked I have lost this photograph, and only SK: Describe your experience working about your desire to reconstruct memories of it exist. This image says with the Vietnamese community in histories that occurred before you a lot for those who have memories of Lincoln. were born but that profoundly affected Viet Nam, a country that they yearn for BD: What I wanted to achieve in this you. Does your interest in history and and were forced out of due to war and project was to present a self-portrait of in telling stories correlate with your political persecution. Lincoln’s Vietnamese community, which decision to become a photographer? Like most immigrants and refugees is multidimensional: it includes people of Binh Danh: Absolutely—looking at to the United States, those of the different generations and religions, both photos has always been a way for me first generation want to preserve their new arrivals and those who came in to learn about the past. A photograph ethnic heritage and traditions. Refugees 1975. Because the community is quite depicts a past event. My family and I fled who resettled in Lincoln carried their small compared to those in California, Viet Nam in 1975 because of the harsh cultural tools with them, using them to I was able to navigate easily from one postwar conditions. I recalled that my remake the landscape into something member to the next. Someone would mother only brought a few photos with familiar, like little Italy or Irish and Jewish know someone else and put me in her, those of her parents. Growing up in neighborhoods in Brooklyn. The title touch with them, and someone else the United States, Viet Nam, its history, Viet Nam, Nebraska is a way to invite would mention a temple or church I and my connection to it was something discussion about what it means to be a needed to photograph. that existed in my imagination. The only Vietnamese American. Like the picture I The UNL students were the most way for me to access it was through just mentioned, it is about planting Viet receptive to the project. I felt that they photos and visual documentation of Nam into the soil of an adopted land. see Viet Nam, Nebraska as a way to be the war. It was not until I visited my SK: In another setting, you remarked, represented, to be the bridge from one grandmother in Viet Nam for the first “History is not something in the past but generation to the next. I believe most time, in my early twenties, that I received here and now. It is happening right now of these students were born here in photos of my family and me in Viet Nam. and everyone’s history is our history.” the United States or arrived as children Because I was only a baby then, those Can you talk more about this? and therefore do not have a connection images are both real and fictional: I BD: My other pleasure in life is science. to Viet Nam. As young adults in this could only dream of those memories of When I was a child, I learned that country, they are trying to develop an my mother holding me in her arms. everything is made of atoms. The atoms identity, and being part of this project SK: Can you explain how the title of the that make up all of us were created in was a way to be part of the American exhibition Viet Nam, Nebraska evolved? stars billions of years ago. A single atom story. I see this work as a collaboration, BD: In 2003 I was invited to visit the carries within itself billions of years of and during the exhibition, I hope many University of Nebraska–Lincoln and history, not only those we learn about in people visit the installation and share share my work with the community. A textbooks, but also those in the future. stories from one generation to the next. student gave me a photo of his father I believe we do share history. Someone SK: In your research, you discovered constructing a koi pond in the shape of else’s history might be foreign to us, but the Solomon Butcher photographs of Viet Nam. The image depicts a man in the atoms that had been involved in that early Nebraska homesteaders. You his fifties standing knee-high in a hole, history could exist in us today. And I don’t have likened these settlers to many of laying black plastic into the soft earth. believe this is a stretch. To be human is the Vietnamese who left their homes The father is smiling at the camera, to be empathic, to understand someone to make a new life here. Describe this happy with his creation. Unfortunately, else stories, the good and the bad. connection a bit more.

Buddhist Community of Lincoln (Chua Linh Quang), 2011. Archival pigmented print; 40.6 x 50.8 cm (16 x 20 in).

12 | artland BD: I think this is the quintessential making landscape daguerreotypes of story of America, a nation of Yosemite. I bought a van and made immigrants, an opportunity to start it into a mobile darkroom so I could again, to be new. In Butcher’s process my daguerreotype plates in the photographs, I saw family units, field, just as the famous photographer homes, and the landscape, but Carleton Watkins made some of his moreover a sense of prosperity. I works about 150 years ago. thought much about those images in As a kid, I had always wanted to relation to this project. The faces might visit and photograph Yosemite. My change, but the dream is still the same: relationship to this park, like that a place to call home. In some of my of most Americans, was through pictures, those that show families in photographs. After watching the Ken front of their homes, I tried to copy the Burns documentary on the national composition of Butcher’s photographs. parks, I learned that they were invented We took chairs outside, and I spread because they give us, as a nation of family members in front of the home. immigrants, a way to feel anchored In other pictures, such as Vietnamese and rooted on this continent. They are Buddhist Temple of Lincoln, NE, I tried the meaning of home for many of us. to focus on the landscape and the By making photographs of Yosemite, I Lion dancers at Sheldon from the Asian other houses in the background, which am witnessing what it means to be an Community and Cultural Center. exist in contrast with the temple. His American and seeing this land through images are one hundred years old and my own eyes via the ground glass of depict Nebraskans as they were then. my box camera. Since daguerreotypes Sheldon Celebrates A century from now, I hope the images are highly reflective, viewers see both with Tet Festival in this exhibition survive, so that those themselves and Yosemite in the image, in the future—the offspring of these forming a connection to this land in all To celebrate the Vietnamese Lunar families—can look back at our time and of its complexity. New Year, nearly 650 people filled the say that was American then. SK: Since this is a Nebraska magazine, Sheldon Museum of Art for its first- SK: Although much of your artwork and since you have now made three ever Tet Festival. Held on January 27, has been in response to the Vietnam trips to this state, do you have some the event was filled with art, dance, War and its effects, more recently you observations you would care to share film, food, games, and music. The have been making daguerreotypes of based on your experiences here. celebration sprang from a partnership Yosemite National Park. Talk briefly BD: Nebraska is an amazing place, among Sheldon, the Asian Community how you are going about this? What rich in its cultural diversity and history. and Cultural Center, the Nebraska Arts led you to Yosemite and how are you As an observer, the flat landscape is Council and the Nebraska Cultural developing the images? What is your quite fascinating; there is a sense that Endowment, the University of Nebraska– ultimate goal with this body of work everything is on an equal playing field. Lincoln, and US Bank. and what does it signify in respect to There’s no big mansion on the hill; The Linh Quang Temple Lion Dance your artistic direction? everyone lives at the same altitude. Troupe, the Karen Children’s Dance BD: In recent years I have turned my SK: Would you care to give any advice Group, and the Chinese Performance camera on the history and landscape to budding photographers? Group entertained the large crowd. of America. As a member of a racial BD: I hate to be cliché, but I’d say Vietnamese music was played minority, I think I examine history and follow your dream, follow what comes throughout the celebration. To cap off see land in new ways. Ever since I was naturally, and be in the present the evening, an 84-minute film, The a child, I have always questioned how moment. I have to echo Steve Jobs’s Journey of Vaa Nguyen, was screened much of an American I am. Do other Stanford commencement speech: in the museum’s Abbott Auditorium. people see me as an American? So “Remember that you are going to die. The featured speaker of the event lately, back in California, I have been Stay hungry, stay foolish.” was Dau Nguyen, president of the Vietnamese Community of Lincoln, and comments were also made by Sheldon director Jorge Daniel Veneciano and Richard Boucher, president of the board of the Asian Community and Cultural Center of Lincoln. “It was the Sheldon Museum’s good fortune and privilege to partner with the Asian Community and Cultural Center to host the Tet Festival at our site,” said Sharon Kennedy, curator of civic and cultural engagement. “We have grown from the experience and are looking forward to Tet 2013.” Vivian Nguyen, Environmental Studies, UNL, Class of 2014, 2011. Next year’s Tet Festival will be held Archival pigmented print. Feb. 22, 2013, at the Sheldon.

artland | 15 Collector Phillip Schrager

Janet Farber interviewed by Michael Krainak

Michael Krainak spoke with Janet unlike his peers. As for the question found himself flirting with a gorgeous Farber, Director of the Phillip Schrager of collecting art versus other hobbies red color-field painting by Mark Rothko Collection of Contemporary Art in or investments, it shares with them that was also dramatically expensive: Omaha, about aspects of the collecting the ability to create an aggregation of $50,000 (about $330,000 in today’s career of late businessman Phil your own distinct choosing, requiring dollars). It did have the effect of Schrager (1937–2010). Founder and a consensus of one. Art tends to hook sparking his interest in collecting and chairman of the Pacesetter Corporation more deeply, offering those intangible in the national art scene. In 1969 Phil and its later spin-off, AmeriFirst Home satisfactions that are visual, intellectual, purchased some editioned prints by Improvement Finance, Schrager even spiritual. Phil looked for art that well-known Pop artists, followed by a was widely regarded as a shrewd was, as he put it, “beautiful, striking and small 1950 Hans Hofmann oil. entrepreneur, philanthropist, and one of imaginative” and that would, ideally, By about 1973, Phil realized that the finest, most dedicated art collectors touch his soul. That’s a tall order for a he was interested in acquiring art in the Midwest. In 2006 he opened stack of stock certificates to offer. seriously but knew that he couldn’t a 6,000-square-foot gallery space MK: That said, how did this process get inside that art scene from his desk at his office building, devoting it to a begin? What and who, perhaps, in Omaha. So he made a series of portion of his collection. Accessible by provided the inspiration and guidance? calls that landed him at the doorstep appointment to arts and educational JF: In recounting his years of collecting, of Klaus Kertess, then co-owner of groups throughout the year, the gallery Phil would always tell the story of Bykert Gallery in midtown Manhattan. will host its sixth annual public open his first significant art encounter Klaus introduced him to a number of house on Sunday, May 6, from noon when he was a college sophomore artists, including Brice Marden, David to 4:00pm at 4405 S. 96th Street in traveling with friends in Europe. They’d Novros and Michael Goldberg, who Omaha. visited Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, became mainstays in the collection, Michael Krainak: Considering the home to Rembrandt’s masterpiece and he helped guide Phil toward finding many things one can purchase or invest The Nightwatch. He described the his own aesthetic and comfort zone. in, what motivated Phil to concentrate experience as rapturous—it awakened Klaus was Phil’s official art adviser on art? Why the preoccupation? Was a completely new awareness of art and, for more than ten years and would this a Schrager family tradition? I believe, had an effect on the scale, be an unofficial sounding board for Janet Farber: Collecting art was not physicality, and capacity for impact that many more. Even in Phil’s final years a family tradition nor was Phil an artist became part of his own aesthetic, even of collecting, they’d compare notes on himself, though he would confess to down to a sensibility about color, light, their “hit lists.” having harbored aspirations to be an and movement. As much as he loved it, Phil would architect. It was something that he In the early years, he bought some be the first to tell you that collecting came to through his own path and art without a collector’s intent: a pair is hard work requiring constancy of certainly on his own terms. He did not of two-for-$25 paintings to decorate purpose. Contemporary art, especially, begin buying with the intent to collect, bare apartment walls, a few of pieces never rests and shifts focus with but he eventually recognized that he by area artists. But Phil was getting to lightning speed. He would never claim was acquiring with a purpose and rigor New York on business fairly often and to be an expert, despite his daily diet right | Phillip Schrager in 2008, looking through Antony Gormley’s Feeling Material XXIII (2005) in the foreground. Michael Goldberg’s Park Avenue Facade (1956–57) serves as a backdrop. Photo by Kent Sievers.

Page 18-19 | The galleries of the Phillip Schrager Collection of Contemporary Art in Omaha. From left to right are Thomas Ruff’s jpeg nt101 (2004), Laura Owens’s Untitled (2003), Jim Dine’s The Tender Boy (2004), and Jonathan Lasker’s What Babies Dream (2004).

16 | artland

Stephen Mueller, and Terry Winters. He say. Ironically, it was the last purchase uncertain terrain that contemporary art offered Marden an unusual commission he made. represents, is something that is not a to design paint schemes for two of his MK: Why did Phil choose to hang this one-and-done experience—it holds corporate jets—they were cool and part of the collection in such a special your attention, invites contemplation restrained, as you’d expect. In Goldberg place at work? What percentage of the and repeat viewing, and does not he found not only an artist with a gift collection is displayed in the workplace always produce the same response for extending the gestural promise of as opposed a residential location? every time. Phil enjoyed its rather abstract expressionism, but also a JF: When Phil created AmeriFirst in insistent challenge and provocation. dear friend. New purchases were often 2004, the company had to consolidate MK: When you give a tour of or a talk the favorite of the moment, but then its operations into a light industrial about the collection, what are the most you’d find him becoming re-entranced warehouse with modular offices that common questions and responses from with paintings he’d stopped “seeing,” weren’t suited to displaying artwork. your audience? What works do viewers as he did with Michael Tetherow’s So he began to consider how else most gravitate to and why? haunting Face Painted Backward. Phil’s he might experience these treasures. JF: The most frequent response has enjoyment could also be mixed with a Internationally, there has been a to do with expectations of first-time degree of pride in the circumstance of trend among private collectors and visitors. They did not foresee an art an acquisition, whether he’d made a foundations to create formal spaces gallery hiding in this industrial area, great deal, found just the right piece, for their holdings, a project he’d begun had no idea that the space would be aced out another collector at auction, or to entertain. He first considered offsite so large or the collection so extensive. schmoozed an artist into letting go of a spaces but rejected them when he They are eager to know about Phil and work they’d kept for the studio. realized that he’d give up that 24/7 how he collected. And where the rest Phil’s office looks like something enjoyment of the collection. So he of the collection is and what the house in an Architectural Digest feature. carved out 6,000 square feet of could possibly look like if some of these Centered around a low, sleek desk underutilized space in his own building, big works used to live there. And what and console, the room is outfitted with built walls, hung track lights, and the plans for the collection will be. elegant modernist furnishings in leather, created a true art gallery. As for individual works, there are chrome, and granite, under which run The gallery and its nine rooms many favorites. Jim Dine’s Pinocchio cloud-soft taupe wool rugs. Dark wood hold approximately 60 artworks; figure, The Tender Boy, seems to be beams and moldings frame linen-lined the executive offices another 40, our unofficial mascot, greeting everyone walls, and all of these elements provide representing something less than one with joyful, open arms. Neo Rauch’s a perfect, neutral canvas for the bold third of the total collection. Art in the Blue Elephant attracts visitors with pop of the art collection. For his walls, gallery is a combination of old favorites, its enticing, ambiguous surrealism; Phil chose several works that were “alumni” from Pacesetter’s offices, and Alexander Ross’s untitled green similarly classic and spare—Ralph some pieces shifted from the Schrager biomorphic painting with its obsessive Humphrey’s frame painting Hartcourt, house. Newly acquired works were coolness; Matthew Ritchie’s The First Robert Mangold’s arching Curved almost always shipped to the gallery Sea with its explosive, scrawling energy Plane/Figure VII; even Richard Tuttle’s to see how well they “played together.” and Phil’s inventive framing; and Rachel Schrager’s art-filled office functions as a gallery in itself, featuring, from left to right, Jonathan Borofsky’s Walking Man (1991–96), Nick Chiburis’s Untitled (1970, on the desk), Mel Bochner’s Blah, Blah, Blah (2009), Ken Price’s Dynamo B (2002), Mary Heilmann’s Woody’s Truck Stop (1992–97), and Ralph Overlap Composition VI, with its glowing Older artworks were also tested there Lachowitz’s eye-shadow mosaic, John, Humphrey’s Hartcourt (1965). boxes of color on humble plywood, to see if they could still hold their own in with the charm and audacity of its complements that soothing balance. the context of others. In that sense, Phil medium. Thomas Struth’s Audience 5 If you sat around the meeting table, viewed the gallery as an experimental appeals for its pure reflection of our own of art-related reading, phone calls and would have said the collection was New is its emphasis on painting. You’ve got though, you were greeted by David space rather than as a specifically experience of museum-going magic e-mails, despite his frequent visits to York School–centric, largely abstract, to remember that during the years he Salle’s curious and theatrical painting thematic or didactic one. and for the hidden surprise in the photo. galleries, studios, auctions, and art fairs. quite often painterly and physical, and devoted to the medium, it was declared Ashton, a rather baroque homage to MK: In what way do you think his Really, there’s something for everyone Call it false modesty, but this was a characterized by artists who really dead, then revived, and played out choreographer Sir Frederick Ashton. collection reflected Phil’s personality and to love. steadfast belief. addressed the formal aspects of their again. Sure, from a pure inventory- But the pièce de résistance was always character? In what way is a collection MK: If Phil were alive today, do you MK: Overall, then, how would you medium. Now, the collection’s sweep management perspective, it’s easier to the work that had the best, most part of the owner’s persona? think he would still be collecting? How characterize the Schrager collection in is more international, less gestural and own paintings than, say, installations, confrontational sightline—hung over JF: Well, you’re asking me to play were his tastes and preferences in art terms of numbers, size, medium and more linear, and often representational, but paintings were a matter of the heart Phil’s console, behind his desk. When amateur psychologist here. Phil was beginning to change? genre, and content? with a distinctly pointed sense of humor. for Phil. He supported painters when the offices first opened, he installed definitely a Type A personality, a very JF: I have absolutely no doubt that he JF: During his lifetime, Phil acquired MK: In terms of reputation, what are the the market loved them and when it a new work by Karen Davie, a loud big, high-energy personality, akin to the would still be collecting. His taste was nearly 500 recorded artworks, although truly outstanding works in this collection didn’t. The results were pretty fantastic, fugue of swirling, colorful brushstrokes, scale and physicality of the work that always changing to some degree, even the collection numbers closer to 350 and why? in the end. guaranteed to keep his audience off he preferred. He had an entrepreneurial if it did encompass a certain aesthetic. today. His primary interest was in JF: There’s no question that Phil MK: From his own POV and personal balance. In 2009 he replaced it with spirit that was suited to the risks and Among the last works he purchased painting, with some attention given acquired masterworks by artists now taste, did Phil have particular favorites a new Mel Bochner word painting, rewards of collecting contemporary was a very thickly painted, vibrant to sculpture; other media finished a in the art canon: Brice Marden, Willem in his collection? What did he surround a distinctly conceptual piece for the art. It was an adventure searching abstraction by the German artist André distant third. One look will tell you de Kooning, Mark Rothko, Richard himself with in his office? collection. Although Phil never told for “a certain kind of beauty,” as he Butzer. He was really energized by it, that Phil was passionate about scale, Diebenkorn, Jean-Michel Basquiat, JF: Like being asked to choose among me just what delighted him about would say, and he responded to the thought that Butzer might be the “next gravitating toward canvases with the and Julian Schnabel were artists about your children, it was difficult for Phil to this painting, Blah, Blah, Blah, with thrill of the chase. A recent study best thing,” and looked forward to power to utterly engulf the viewer. The whom he often spoke. And his are not have favorites. Clearly, he had favorite its pinwheel of repeated meaningless suggests a connection between the following his career. In a way, the work, works he acquired range in date from minor examples—Phil had a knack for artists whose work he purchased often dialogue, seemed to me to have the personalities of artists and collectors— which is retro abstract expressionist, about 1950 to 2009, and the majority picking out the really good ones. and over a period of time, including effect of requiring the visitor to have both very intuitive types, both open to brought Phil’s collecting interests full were purchased within a year or two Besides the masterworks, one of the Goldberg, Marden, and Novros, and something important and succinct to new experiences. Art, especially the circle. of their making. Twenty years ago, you distinguishing features of his collection also Carroll Dunham, Bill Jensen,

20 | artland artland | 21 portfolio Victoria Goro-Rapoport

Text and interview by Rhonda Garelick

Contemplating a work by Russian-born artist Victoria Goro-Rapoport, one enters an alternate universe, or rather, multiple universes. Her etchings and digital prints—reaching over six feet in height—pull us into vast, dense, and intricately patterned spaces where finely wrought, highly stylized images seem to have floated in from a dream. These are images culled from disparate corners of our cultural memory, with particular emphasis on Renaissance iconography and Surrealist themes of play and metamorphosis. The result is a startling combination of gravitas and whimsy, Alice in Wonderland meets the Quattrocento.

Goro-Rapoport’s landscapes mingle frame a mysterious tangle of cables comment on several specific pieces. bodies, buildings, and the natural criss-crossed over an expanse of cloudy, • • • world, all realistically drawn yet wholly night sky, while a lone male figure—the RG: Tell me about your mysterious reimagined and transposed into new, sleepwalker—strides over one thin alphabet and the texts you create with it. peculiar, even mystical settings. Many cable, as blankly calm as a character in VG-R: My fascination with the invented of her works feature mysterious lines a Magritte. alphabet started in my childhood. When of text written in a private alphabet Goro-Rapoport is fascinated with I was about seven . . . I invented a she invented for her own use, a magical spaces and the secrets that foundation myth for myself: I came from secret code that begs for yet resists lie beneath surfaces, which is not the planet called Ilion (I may have read or interpretation. Muscular, nude bodies surprising given her extensive training heard about Homer’s Iliad at the moment). recall Michelangelo’s sculpted slaves as a theatrical set designer. Her interest The planet was destroyed, but some or the biblical characters of his frescos in exploring how bodies fit (or don’t fit) people, including many children, survived in the Sistine Chapel. Half-standing into their surroundings might stem partly and escaped in high-tech space ships, buildings conjure a post-apocalyptic from her own experience as a Russian one of which, full of children, crashed Manhattan or Roman ruins. Drawings émigré forging her professional life in on planet Earth, but all the passengers of fantastical contraptions resemble the new and very different space of the survived, and dispersed among the local the futuristic machines sketched by American Plains. She is also a deeply population. I imagined myself one of Leonardo da Vinci in his notebooks. literary thinker, her conversation rich in these aliens. I was smart enough never to Conventional scale and logic cede to a references to authors like Dostoyevsky, mention this fantasy to my parents—they surrealist-inspired vertigo of proportions; Huxley, Nabokov, Orwell, and Poe. In just would not understand. I did not really inner and outer worlds collide, as do the discussing her work, the artist offers believe in it, but it was fun to play, as if it organic and inorganic. In Inner Above, eloquent analyses of its political and were true. My destroyed planet required Inner Below, for example, the interior of personal meanings and the dense history, so I invented stories about it, a theater or opera house is dominated nexus of influences that inform it. We and, since this alien history could not be by a gigantic, androgynous human figure asked Goro-Rapoport, a professor written in any of the Earth’s languages, I that dwarfs the surroundings, its lower of drawing and printmaking at the invented a new alphabet for it. body open to reveal the pelvic bones. University of Nebraska–Kearney, to talk Later, when I left Russia, I was often In Sleepwalker, two building facades, about her style, her background, and surrounded by languages I could not which appear to be theatrical backdrops, her technique. We then invited her to understand, which was both frustrating

Shell, 2006–07. Pastel; 92 x 61.5 cm (36 x 61.5 in). The piece shows a seashell combined with elements of baroque architecture. This combination turns it into an object that exists in both the realm of “god-made” and in the realm of man-made things. My great inspiration for these pieces was the nineteenth- century German naturalist and artist Ernst Haeckel, who created a series of stunning lithographs depicting marine creatures, emphasizing the symmetry and repetitive nature of their design in order to prove his evolutionary theories.

22 | artland and exciting. As an emigrant, I have lived ancestors in the Italian Renaissance and techniques: line etching, engraving, for a long period of time in three countries Baroque periods, but as a child, I was aquatint, mezzotint, dry point, and even that use four completely different exposed to social realism before I had photo-etching on occasion. Some alphabets: Russia uses Cyrillic; Europe ever discovered any other art movements. printmakers are purists, but I really like and the United States use Latin; and In my own work I use the human mixing these diverse techniques, since Israel uses two different writing systems figure, often in an attitude of struggle they allow me an interesting combination for Hebrew and Arabic. I had to learn and or discomfort, and I see this influence of different effects on the same plate. use these alphabets in order to fit into the coming directly from my early exposure to Recently, I have started working with societies in which I was residing. Since official Soviet art. computer-generated colors and imagery. a lot of my work is inspired by literature, I was brought up in a thoroughly This hodgepodge of techniques is hard it is natural for me to use written texts in atheist society. Half of my family has to coordinate and make coherent, but it my prints. But here the dilemma arises: Jewish ancestry, and half of my family is looks rather interesting when done well. Russian is the only language in which Russian. Religion was never mentioned • • • I can confidently write grammatically at school, and it certainly was not on the Goro-Rapoport seeks nothing less correct sentences. But to use Russian agenda at home. I had regarded it as an than to investigate humanity’s greatest while living in a completely different old, moribund superstition. My interest in mysteries, “to penetrate the secret of [our] society could be interpreted as saying, it was sparkled when I started studying existence in this world,” as she puts it. “My roots are Russian; I don’t want to art history and realized that I constantly The great contradictions evident in her assimilate or mix with you, foreigners.” encountered terms I did not understand work, the way it seems to pay homage to This was a statement I did not want to and stories I did not know. So I read the tradition and history while simultaneously make. And so I invented a new, personal New and Old testaments and discovered exploding convention and restraint from alphabet, incomprehensible to anyone but that although I would never be a believer, within—often with ironic humor—all make myself. This removes political undertones much of the Bible is rather inspirational sense when we consider her personal and places the viewer in the situation of on an emotional and intellectual level. philosophy of the artist, which contains the immigrant: confused and unable to For an atheist, the Bible is the perfect within it equal parts nihilistic despond and read the world around them. This, in a place to visit big ideas about morality and great optimism: sense, takes people out of their comfort justice, as well as cruelty, violence, and The fundamental question of who zone, and mimics for them my personal oppression. A believer might say that I we are, why we are here, and experiences as an émigré. regard biblical texts with the eyes of a the purpose (if any) of human RG: How would you describe your style modern infidel and bend their truth to fit presence in this universe, remains and your range of influences? my own limited, secular agenda. But that unanswered. How should we, as VG-R: I am very much a nonpurist is the only way I can approach it—as an human beings, define ourselves artist. My work combines very eclectic inspirational wealth of literary material. in the world? What is the role of elements, a practice that I think stems As a former set designer, I am strongly the artist in it? Do we function as from my immigrant experience. Hopping connected to literature as a source of a mirror, which reflects the reality from country to country, from culture to themes and imagery for my work. of our time, or are we also a part culture, one is exposed to many political RG: How would you describe your of the apparatus, which propels environments, climates, life styles, artistic technique? it? Are we perhaps marionettes or approaches and techniques, and so on. VG-R: I usually use very minimal color in puppeteers (slaves of religious and To preserve one’s sanity and identity, my prints, although very few of are totally political ideas, or their masters)? one is compelled to select from this black-and-white. I usually modify the Never before has humankind great pool of styles and ideas only the black ink to give it a slightly warmer or been so close to penetrating the interesting or important elements and to cooler tint. In printmaking one can print mysteries of space, time and the reject or ignore the rest. The result is a a plate with many colors, but one would workings of our own minds and hodgepodge of sometimes seemingly not be able to separate these colors bodies. At the same time however, incompatible parts. In art, such piling up with sharp boundaries. The transition we have never been closer to a of movements and styles can often lead from one color to the other will always catastrophic self-annihilation. And to incoherence and a failure to convey the be gradual, blurry. To create a sharp never before have the dividing message. Sometimes, though, it leads to boundary between colors, or to mix gaps between instinct and reason, something new and unique. One just has and layer colors, one must introduce logic and passion, tradition and to experiment and find a way to bring all multiple plates, each of which carries innovation been so deep and this diversity under one roof, so to speak. its own distinct, sharply defined color. seemingly unbridgeable. In my early life, I was exposed mainly This process turns printmaking almost to the work of Soviet social realists. It was into painting. Some printmakers revel in She sums it up, characteristically, with everywhere—in the streets (in murals layering and mixing colors, but for me a literary reference: “The eighteenth- and sculptures), in the underground train this is not essential. The most important century Russian poet Gavrila Derjavin, in a stations (in mosaics and stained glass), components of my images are lines. I moment of prophetic vision, managed to in the school buildings (in paintings create a linear image very much akin summarize several millennia of intellectual and busts). I assume that the heroic, to a pen-and-ink drawing, and color is strife and struggle in two beginning lines struggling, revolutionary figures made a just something I use occasionally for of his poem: ‘I am Czar, I am God / I am strong impression on my young mind, emphasis. So most of my prints look fairly Slave, I am Worm.’ I believe, that today, Inner Above and since I am still drawn to them today. monochromatic. these lines are even more relevant than at Inner Below, 2004. Of course, the Soviet realists had great I primarily use various intaglio the time they were written.” Etching and engraving.

artland | 25

Left | Sleepwalker, 2003. Etching. Just like my invented alphabet, Sleepwalker is related to my emigrant experience. It depicts a figure suspended between two buildings that represent two worlds. The figure is walking the rope, which in itself suggests danger. There is also a sense of indeci- sion, since the little figure is not moving anywhere at the moment—it just stands there, full of doubts, not knowing which world to go to for safety.

Page 26-27 | Urban Crucifixion II, 2009. Etching, engraving, and digital print. I grew up in Moscow, a densely populated metropolis with a very vibrant, cosmopolitan social, cultural, and financial life. Rural Russia (or the United States) seems rather a quiet pond by comparison. The theme of this print is that the richness of experiences that a big city can provide can be very inspiring but also can also turn rather distracting and, for a creative person, even destructive. Constant effervescence, which is a main feature of all big cities, can lead to overstimulation.

Page 28 | Stepping Out, 2006. Etching, mezzotint, and engraving. The old proverb says that a fool learns from his own mistakes while a smart man learns from someone else’s. In reality humankind does not learn at all. If we did, we would have finished by now with wars, violence, inequality, and injustice. The bottom of the print features figures of Adam and Eve that I “borrowed” from Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel. They just have committed their first mistake and are now stepping out into a new, unknown, dangerous world in which making choices is a necessity and mistakes are inevitable. page 29 | Mother Earth, 2006. Etching, mezzotint, and digital print. The symbolism of this piece is pretty transparent: I am revisiting the old belief that men exist for discovery and development, while women—being intellectually and physically inferior—should play a support role. The traditional role of women is represented by an image of an “earth mother”: a procreator (rather than a creator) who births and supports future generations.

artland | 31 conservation Kenneth Bé

Interview by Genevieve Ellerbee

Genevieve Ellerbee: How did you and I learned from that process and also conservators and curators. When become a conservator? from studying with painting conservators conservators decide how much to clean Kenneth Bé: My interest in art at the Met. After I decided to specialize a painting or how to retouch missing conservation developed during my on paintings, I spent the last two areas, they must have a thorough junior year at Yale University. As part years of the program training at the understanding of the artists’ intentions. of the art history seminar for majors, I Williamstown Art Conservation Center Fusing these skills and disciplines of learned about very basic concepts of in Massachusetts. After that I went on science and art is one of the unique conservation—especially how to pay to the Cleveland Museum of Art, where I characteristics of the conservation field, attention to the condition of artworks. worked until 2005. I guess. We had to write short condition reports GE: What part of your job do you find GE: What services can people expect on objects in the university art gallery, most fascinating? from a conservation lab like the Ford and that was enough to peak my KB: I’m always intrigued by how works Center? interest. I also received good advice survive through time: some maintain KB: Since we’re primarily set up to solve from a graduate student, who arranged their pristine state over eons, while practical problems for compromised for me to apprentice in the Yale Center others are severely affected by the artworks or historical artifacts, we can for British Art’s paper conservation stresses of their short history. The recommend treatments after a piece conserve artworks as part of their lab. This hands-on experience was other thing that astonishes me is how is signed into the center. After that, if overall mission to acquire, present, important in teaching me about the conservation interventions can correct the owner agrees to continue, we can and preserve important objects. Works field, and it also gave me practical skills or rectify some aspects of degradation. perform treatments. Since we closely outside the realm of the museum, that helped when I applied for graduate Cleaning oxidized varnish or excessive adhere to the guidelines and ethical including privately owned artworks and training in conservation. dirt is one obvious type of treatment, procedures established by the American those on the art market, all face the GE: Can you describe some of the and it must be used judiciously, if at all. Institute of Conservation, we also hardships of time and their environment. training you went through in your It’s also gratifying to very subtly correct document all of our work with before If an owner cares about an artwork, then studies? canvas deformations and reduce layers and after photographs. any form of treatment to help preserve KB: The conservation program I of varnish to reveal the delicate textures GE: Is there a guiding philosophy that it is invaluable. Even good advice about attended—which was at the Institute of of original paint. governs your work? display, storage, or transportation over Fine Arts at New York University—took GE: Would you describe conservation KB: I try to constantly remind myself the telephone can be significant. After four years and included a master’s as an art or a science? that the look of an artwork is central all, nearly all works were not owned by a degree in art history. As it happens, the KB: I suppose it is more a craft to its meaning. However the piece museum before they became museum IFA is located in Manhattan, just blocks profession, actually—at least in the way is perceived in terms of its form, objects! away from the Metropolitan Museum of it’s practiced in regional conservation colors, textures, and so on ultimately Art, the Whitney Museum of American labs like the Gerald Ford Conservation influences what type of visual meaning Art, and the Frick Collection. There was Center in Omaha, where I work. we can gain from it. Art conservation never a shortage of excellent material Regional centers are designed to solve can play a central role in helping (or to look at! For the first two years, all the sometimes urgent issues of preservation hindering) these qualities. This is the students trained together in lectures and and treatment. Many of the works that great challenge in the profession: to do above | Kenneth Bé in his laboratory at formal courses that covered all materials come to us are receiving their first- what is necessary to preserve—and Omaha’s Gerald R. Ford Conservation Center, and technology from prehistory through ever examinations and treatments. In a perhaps restore—the visual integrity of which is a division of the Nebraska State today, exploring how materials degrade well-developed museum conservation an artwork with full respect to the artist’s Historical Society. and what approaches we can take department, there might be a scientist original intent. in treating and preserving them. The on staff whose sole responsibility is GE: How is conservation important for right | Kenneth Bé at work on John Falter’s IFA has a comprehensive collection of to make detailed technical analyses works not within a museum collection? View of Artist Sketching and His Own Lap artworks for students to study and treat, of artworks and to collaborate with KB: Museums have mandate to (1933), retouching passages of new paint that he had already applied to cover areas of loss.

32 | artland authors Janis Londraville and Richard Londraville

Interview by Russel L. Erpelding and Audrey Kauders

Paul Swan (1883–1972) grew up interested in him as well. Also, Janis’s to an older, more traditional form of in the small Nebraska town of Crab middle name—and her mother’s maiden aesthetic beauty. Orchard, far from where he wanted to name—is Swan, although she and Paul Andy Warhol liked to make art out be. Throughout his life, he was praised are not related. of things others discarded, and this as a dancer and painter; after his RE/AK: As you wrote in your book, was essentially his interest in Swan. death, however, his name faded into Paul Swan was bisexual, which was not When the Warhol Film Project at the obscurity. Richard and Janis Londraville a secret. Do you think his works were Whitney Museum of American Art came rediscovered Swan while doing research influenced by his sexuality? about, Andy’s films of Paul—especially for another project. In 2006 the couple RL/JL: Occasionally Paul “left” a Paul Swan (1965)—were restored and published The Most Beautiful Man in the place quickly just when he seemed brought again to the public. That helped. World: Paul Swan, from Wilde to Warhol to establish a good reputation, and Also, Paul had been dead for a couple with the University of Nebraska Press. we wonder if this was because things of decades, and views of bisexuality had Richard and Janis Londraville were closing in on him a bit—perhaps changed. People were more open to answered questions posed by the there was suspicion about his behavior, learning about his eccentric personality, Museum of Nebraska Art’s Russel L. or perhaps he simply needed to free we think. And, most important, Dallas Erpelding, ARTreach Coordinator, and himself of hangers-on. Leaving places Swan, Jr., Paul’s nephew, had kept Audrey S. Kauders, Director. where he was well known certainly hurt his scrapbooks containing hundreds Russel Erpelding/Audrey Kauders: him, but he seemed to recover and of articles in papers and magazines, How did you learn of Paul Swan? What begin again wherever he went. Finally, which have not yet been indexed. did you find most interesting about him? he seemed to find a home, a reputation, These helped us, as researchers, Richard Londraville/Janis Londraville: and a place of peace in Paris. But then become intimately familiar with Paul’s Richard knew writer/model Jeanne the Nazis arrived, and he fled. He was professional life from its very beginning. Robert Foster during the last six years never the same because he had to Dallas also owned Paul’s unpublished of her life. The former mistress of famed leave his partner, Fred Bates. It was a autobiography, which gave us access to art collector John Quinn, she was also heartbreak from which he never really the inner workings of Paul’s personal life. a writer for the American Review of recovered. Gay studies had become popular. The Reviews. She met Paul in New York RE/AK: Swan was celebrated as the stars seemed aligned, finally. City around 1917, and they became “Most Beautiful Man in the World,” RE/AK: Most artists draw from ideas close friends. She was a nonjudgmental garnering prizes and praises over six that are most known to them, like a person, kind, and interested in his views decades. Why do you think he had childhood home or family. Why do you about art and life. She left Richard two been forgotten and was waiting to be think Swan completely turned away photos of a bust that Paul made of “rediscovered?” from his Nebraska roots? her during that period, one of which RL/JL: When Paul returned to New RL/JL: Paul didn’t turn away from his is reproduced in our biography. There York City in the early 1940s, he was roots, actually. He had trouble with his are a few pages about him in our 2001 approaching sixty and had lost some family, and he didn’t like farm work. He biography of Jeanne, Dear Yeats, Dear of his good looks and agility. His art preferred indoor work with his mother. Pound, Dear Ford: Jeanne Robert had gone out of style; he was largely He was probably considered lazy by his Foster And Her Circle Of Friends forgotten or ignored. His dance and brothers. But he always talked about (Syracuse University Press, 2001). lecture performances drew a crowd of being a farm boy. In many articles, Because she admired Paul, we became people seeking oddities and/or a return he speaks of himself as just that. He

Paul Swan (American, 1883–1972). Self-Portrait in Egyptian Dress, 1923. Oil on canvas. Courtesy of the collection of The John and Mabel Ringling Museum of Art, the State Art Museum of Florida.

34 | artland especially noted this to European died, he would often quote her to his reporters when he was in France. Many studio guests, recalling, “As Mrs. Swan of his landscapes come from visions would say….” that began in Crab Orchard. He came RE/AK: Not surprisingly, Paul had an home to visit on occasions, but there unusual marriage to Helen Gavit Swan. was conflict with his parents. He loved Can you explain how this affected his them and they loved him, but they were work and the relationship he had with in different universes. His mother was her and their daughters? a strong fundamentalist Methodist. His RL/JL: Paul loved his daughters, but father was a hard-working farmer. He there was quite a bit of angst between was a dancer and artist. them at different times. This isn’t RE/AK: In your book, Swan’s family uncommon with an absent father. Much seemed his greatest support as of the time, he was traveling and leading well as the cause of most of his his own life in Paris with Fred Bates. disappointments. Did the Swan family They no doubt felt neglected. But there realize and accept Paul’s sexuality? were great moments of love between RL/JL: Yes and no. It was really a them. Flora especially had issues to “don’t ask, don’t tell” situation with a resolve, real or imagined, but before she number of family members. Several were died, she and her father made peace. disturbed by his eccentric appearance, There was great love between his rumpled clothing, his flamboyant Paul Swan in Berlin, 1931. Courtesy of Janis Helen and Paul. She wanted children; manner. But they loved the portraits of and Richard Londraville. he needed to be married for several themselves he created. At some level, reasons. It was dangerous to be most of the family realized and accepted bisexual. Dangerous. Illegal. He needed his lifestyle because he was living it far were second hand or second class, a mother figure, too, and Helen was away from them. He asked for money heads would turn when he walked that. She was older, and she comforted from some, and that was difficult for into a restaurant or down a street in him. There was a sweet and great love New York City. He had that presence. them. It is certainly easier for more recent between them—not often sexual, but People would wonder, “What old movie generations of Swans to accept Paul. deep and caring. It was certainly easier star is that?” He was often mistaken We’ve done a lot of work on many artists for them to live far apart so that each for someone more famous. “I am Paul and writers, and collaborating with all had the freedom to live their lives while Swan,” he would emphasize, if asked, members of the Swan family has been continuing to love one another in their as if they were stupid for not knowing. the most pleasurable experience of our own way. RE/AK: Swan knew many famous careers. It was a project filled with joy. RE/AK: Why do you suppose we find people of his day. Can you tell us a bit RE/AK: In your opinion, was Swan Paul Swan of interest today? What was about them and what they may have greater as a dancer or as a painter? his most lasting contribution to the arts? thought of him? We believe that when he wanted Was he the “first” in any of his artistic RL/JL: RL/JL: Paul’s introduction to influential to be so, he was a better painter. people would have been primarily endeavors? The quality of his work varied widely through his profession as an artist. They RL/JL: Gay studies has become an depending on whether he liked you, would sit for him, make allowances for important area of research in recent whether you had money to pay him well, his eccentricities if he displayed them, years. In Paul Swan, we have a man whether he thought you had beauty— and be happy with the resulting portrait who moved through most of the inner was just as important as outer to or sculpture. He was inherently a kind twentieth century confronting his him. His oil portrait of Isadora Duncan, man. We often say that he would have sexuality and accepting who he was which recently sold in London for just been a grand friend of ours, but that with a kind of beauty and vigor that few under $10,000, is superb. Some of his we would have been glad not to be could have done during that era. others, done for quick money, are not. related to him (so he wouldn’t ask us for His life was his most lasting But for Paul, dancing was the most money). He had a gentle heart and was contribution to the arts: he was moved important. He painted often so that he loved by many. by a vitality and passion for the arts and could continue to dance. Dance is what In some cases, he found kindred by a true love for aesthetic creation. made his heart beat and his soul sing. spirits like actress Nance O’Neill, who Certainly he troubled his family for He was a talented musician as well. He was bisexual and reportedly Lizzie money, and he was wounded by people did everything very well when he wanted Borden’s lover at one point. Paul’s who did not appreciate his views, but to do so. portrait of her hangs in the Players he had a love of beauty that reminds us RE/AK: Swan was in some way always Theater Club on Gramercy Street in of Keats’s line from “Ode on a Grecian Poster for a “in character.” Do you feel he thought New York, and we own another smaller Urn:” “Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that performance at that the world was a stage that he lived portrait. Paul and Nance were probably is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need Chicago’s Goodman his everyday life on and those that he able to discuss private issues that would to know.” Theatre, c. 1920s, met were his audience? have been dangerous to make public— Paul was first in this spirit. He was touting Swan as RL/JL: Yes, and Dallas Swan, Jr., their sexuality, for example. In public better in all the arts than most, though “America’s First and Greatest Dancer.” who knew his uncle well, would say Swan would always talk about his wife not best; but he was very, very good; Courtesy of Janis and the same. Everyone who knew Paul and two daughters. After his wife, Helen, and he was best in understanding those Richard Londraville. said that even though his clothes two lines from John Keats.

36 | artland artland | 37 Kimmel • Harding • Nelson Center for the ArtS

Located in the historic Southeast Nebraska town of Nebraska City, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts supports the work of writers, visual artists, and composers from across the country and around the world with uninterrupted time, spacious work areas, comfortable accommodations & weekly stipends. The center is open to the public throughout the week for viewing of the collection of works by former residents and the gallery featuring the work of Nebraska artists. First Thursday Open Studio events are held monthly for resident artists to share their work with the community. Visit the website for application details & event information. www.khncenterforthearts.org

801 3rd Corso Nebraska City, NE F F 402.874.9600 and the Shaping of Modern aMerica [email protected]

Commemorating the 150th Anniversary of the Homestead Act, the Morrill Act, and the Pacific Railway Act and their F far-reaching effects on Nebraska, the Great Plains, F Ma and the United States. e ho y ric a Me 20- • eat eric stea 25, 2012 B f aM d national MonuMent o Featuring: Grenville Dodge, Willa Cather, Standing Bear, Laura Ingalls Wilder, George Washington Carver, and Mark Twain

Presented by the May 19-20 – Homestead Express Additional funding provided Nebraska Humanities pre-Chautauqua weekend in Lincoln by the Nebraska Cultural Council in partnership May 20 – 150th Anniversary Signature Event Endowment, Friends of MONA MUSEUM OF NEBRASKA ART with Homestead National at Homestead National Monument Homestead National Monu- Monument of America ment, the National Endow- May 21-25 – Evening Chautauqua Tent Programs Homestead 2401 Central Avenue, downtown Kearney, 308.865.8559 and the community NatioNal ment for the Humanities, Whether online or on our doorstep, there is always something to see and do at MONA. at Homestead National Monument moNumeNt Hours: Tue.-Sat. 11 a.m.-5 p.m., Sun. 1-5 p.m., of Beatrice. of america and the State of Nebraska. Closed Mon. & major holidays Travel through time, take in all of the beautiful sights, immerse yourself in history, and For more information about all programs please visit: Admission: Free & open to the public become a part of the art of Nebraska. www.nebraskachautauqua.org Image (detail): Augustus W. Dunbier, Cabin Scene, oil on board, n.d., all chautauqua eventS are free and open to the public. Museum Purchase, Museum of Nebraska Art Collection mona.unk.edu O art in motion Charles Fairbanks

By Casey Logan

Charles Fairbanks has some identity issues. A filmmaker from Lexington, Nebraska, he’s as likely to be found in the Chiapas region of Mexico, where he is known as Charles Fairbanks, photographer, teacher, filmmaker, and this: El Gato Tuerto. Irma: Fairbanks’ majestic tribute to living legend Irma Gonzalez, former world champion of women’s professional wrestling.

The One-Eyed Cat. independent filmmaker, with five short with wrestling. An argument could be inheriting traits from each. He was a and signed on to live in a vegetarian co- says. “Wrestling was my way to start In the annals of Mexican professional documentaries to his name. Festivals made that the fifth, “Pioneers”—his sensitive, creative kid until the forces op. Picked up a camera, started taking refining that balance. And also I had long wrestling—the high-flying realm of lucha in Brooklyn, Chicago, San Francisco, most personal film and the one in which of puberty did their best to push such photographs, became a filmmaker. had a desire to wrestle with a camera on libre—there have been some unlikely London, Paris, Berlin, Kuala Lumpur, his Nebraska upbringing figures most sensitivity into a corner. By the time he This new path led him, a few years my head.” competitors, but perhaps none more Malaysia, and Novi Sad, Serbia, have prominently—does so indirectly. But graduated high school, Fairbanks was a later, into an MFA program at the Fairbanks returned to Mexico, so than a white thirty-something from screened his work. Closer to home, what really unites his documentaries, Nebraska state champion wrestler with University of Michigan, where a funny teaching photography to university Nebraska with a Stanford art degree for the second year in a row, he was despite all appearances, is not wrestling. an academic scholarship to Stanford, thing happened. With a brain full of students. On the side he began training and a voice so softly spoken that a selected for a showcase of midwestern What really interests Fairbanks lies where he would go on to wrestle for two graduate school jargon and a particular with area wrestlers, first grappling in the strong breeze could lift it away. To filmmakers by the Omaha nonprofit behind the mask. “Identity,” he says, years before experiencing the first of two lecturer’s rhetoric about the ills of highly technical sport of Brazilian jujitsu this point, this is probably the defining cinema Film Streams (where I work). “and how it manifests itself in the way formative personal crises. In the course masculinity conflicting with his own (documented in his claustrophobic three- characteristic of Fairbanks’ career. But In November Fairbanks received people perform themselves.” of one manic week he now likens to the sense of the word, Fairbanks felt an old minute short, “The Men”) and eventually that may be changing. retrospective treatment from New York’s How Fairbanks’s own identity as a severing of a thousand-mile umbilical urge return. It wasn’t a reversal, exactly, breaking into the Mexican equivalent of By spring 2012, Fairbanks is expected Anthology Film Archives, which featured filmmaker came to manifest itself in a cord, he quit the wrestling team and more a reunion with a part of himself the WWE. Two films have resulted from to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship, all of his films in a single 85-minute luchadorean alter-ego called the One declared himself an art major. He he’d come to ignore. “I was so much that experience: the 23-minute “Flexing a midcareer award recognizing program titled “Tender Muscles.” Eyed Cat goes something like this: In registered to study in Mexico, cancelled in my head in grad school, both in my Muscles,” a study of lucha libre that “exceptional creative ability in the Four of the five films—“Wrestling Lexington, he grew up the son of an an internship working on an Internet art-making and in my academic classes, features Fairbanks wrestling as the One- arts.” In 2011 he completed a pretty with My Father,” “The Men,” “Flexing artsy, new-agey mother and a salt- start-up “before it had even started,” I think I felt I needed some balance,” he Eyed Cat, and the magnificent 12-minute impressive worldwide circuit for an Muscles,” and “Irma”—deal quite directly of-the-earth, tractor-salesman father,

40 | artland artland | 41 Flexing Muscles: With a camera built into his mask, Fairbanks wrestles as the One-Eyed Cat in this telling, behind-the-scenes look at the business of Lucha Libre.

and who he comes from. It was was such a hard summer. It had built up be hard for me to live twelve months a edited in Belgium under the guidance and built up.” year there. But I think it helps me get of SoundImageCutlure, a sort of The residual effects of the experience perspective. The landscape, the sky, postgraduate film school dedicated are still there, he says, but today he the wind. I think in certain ways I know to stretching the conventions of enjoys coming home—seeing old who I am, and I can listen to my mind anthropological filmmaking. “When I friends, meeting new people, and really well there. So it seems like a good showed the rushes to my colleagues in taking in new experiences (“I just ate place to either plan new projects that Belgium, I burst into tears as we were at the Somali restaurant in downtown are sometimes in other places and discussing this process,” Fairbanks says. Lexington”). But it’s still complex. “For sometimes there, and also to think about “They felt really strongly that there was a most purposes [I’m] based out of experiences I’ve had teaching or filming lot of good potential in the material, but it Lexington, Nebraska, but I think it would in other parts of the world.”

Flexing Muscles: Fairbanks’ 23-minute immersive look at the changing face of lucha libre, the masked world of Mexican professional wrestling.

“Irma,” a portrait of Irma Gonzalez, by two young girls, her granddaughters, were also athletes.” Pioneers: A meditative and self-revealing portrait of the artist by way of his parents and hometown of Lexington, Nebraska. former world champion of women’s performing a series of acrobatic poses. Herzog, who pays little attention to professional wrestling. It’s an album cover of a moment, a the actual mechanics of filmmaking and Both exhibit an approach Fairbanks sweet, wry, nod-and-a-wink spotlight on instead prides himself on exploring less calls “participatory observation,” a a woman who in that instant seems like obvious subjects (lockpicking, reading cultural anthropologist’s term that maybe the coolest person in the world. Virgil, “being shot at unsuccessfully”) acknowledges—even requires—that If there is a bombast generally would no doubt see an important the person doing the observing plays associated with professional wrestling, connection between Fairbanks’s a role, however small, in what’s being Fairbanks broadcasts the exact opposite Lexington roots and his filmmaking. A documented. That role is so obvious demeanor. He speaks softly and few summers ago, the artist returned to in “Flexing Muscles” that it comes thoughtfully, searching out the right word his hometown intent on making a film with a mask and tights. In “Irma” it to answer a question about his work. He about his parents and the place of his sneaks up. At first the film feels entirely counts among his influences the French upbringing. “It was such an emotionally observational, a camera following director Nicolas Philibert, the Japanese charged process, and sometimes it was Gonzalez around as she goes about documentarian Hara Kuzuo, and the really difficult,” he says. “It was hard for her day in Mexico City. For several prolific Dutch filmmaker Johan van me at this point to even be in Nebraska. minutes we witness what seems to be der Keuken. And then there is Werner I felt like being in central Nebraska, I the impossible physical contradiction Herzog, whose very first “Rogue Film didn’t make sense to me anymore. I of a septuagenarian wrester’s life: School,” which is really more a seminar didn’t know who I was when I was in the struggling to make it up a flight of on iconoclasm put on by perhaps its process of making this film.” stairs one moment, lifting weights and leading practitioner, Fairbanks attended At 35 minutes, “Pioneers” is flinging herself around on a mat the in 2010. “I think there is a connection awkward and raw, at times beautiful next. Suddenly, a simple but magical between being an athlete and being a and aggravating, sincere and angsty moment comes, when Fairbanks shows filmmaker,” Fairbanks says. “Werner (particularly the scenes involving his hand. Standing proudly in a wrestling Herzog was actually the person who in his mother and father, respectively). ring, Irma begins to sing. To us. As the my life first articulated that connection. Altogether, it’s a document of a young camera pans out, we see she is flanked For him a lot of the great filmmakers man coming to terms with where

42 | artland curator Brandon Ruud

Interview by Pamela S. Thompson

Brandon Ruud is relatively new to the Sheldon Museum of Art. He has the intriguing title of Curator of Transnational American Art and has organized the museum’s exhibition Partners and Adversaries: The Art of Collaboration, drawn largely from the museum’s permanent collection. The exhibit explores the world of artistic partnerships through a variety of themes. An entire gallery, for instance, is devoted to Nebraska’s Robert Henri and his important role in American art history as teacher and mentor. The exhibition also explores the complex relationships Edward Hopper. Room in New York, 1932. Oil on canvas. between artists and their models, as well as between artists and the federal government. One of the interesting gallery, too: they sat on campstools and inside our building—is a major priority. BR: We’ve received a lot of positive Arts critic Michael Krainak and curator Janet Farber lead a community conversation about the followed instructions from Becky about PT: Can you give us an idea of the reviews and have made great aspects of Partners and Adversaries, pleasures and perils of collaboration in the Sheldon exhibition Partners and Adversaries. however, was the equally collaborative where to move next, and our security success this collaborative programming connections with members of the nature of its community programming. guards stood at either end of the room. strategy has had in recent years? community. I’ve also noticed a Pamela Thompson: How did the idea that would engage community members led by Judith Hart and Becky Key The first play, Oogle, was performed in BR: The Angels performances, the significant increase in the number of of staging community collaborations in a dialogue that included the art Boesen, has a large and loyal following, front of Edward Hopper’s painting annual Día de los Muertos celebration in tours that I’ve been asked to give, which begin? and themes in this exhibit. Our guest and we’ve been lucky to partner Room in New York and involved two October, and our first-ever Tet Festival is always a good thing! Brandon Ruud: The idea actually facilitators included Shari Hofschire, with them during a number of recent strangers who are attracted to each this February are all good examples of PT: What’s been your personal take- started in the summer of 2011 with the director of UNO’s Center for Innovation exhibitions. In the case of Partners and other at an art museum and strike how we’ve connected to communities away as the curator of the exhibit? exhibition of works on paper from the in Arts Education; Christopher Maly, Adversaries, the actors performed five up a relationship. The last, Mouse, throughout the city. Together, we’ve BR: To me, the most fun I’ve had in my Harriet and Harmon Kelley Collection, educator and playwright; Janet Farber, one-acts in front of five different pieces was acted in front of Andy Warhol’s explored different artistic media, reached year and a half at Sheldon has been which focuses exclusively on works by director of the Phillip Schrager Collection of art in the galleries. Each performance Myths: Mickey Mouse. For me, seeing out to new audiences, and offered fresh to work with the museum’s amazing African American artists. The Lincoln of Contemporary Art in Omaha; and hit capacity within minutes of ticket a live performance in our galleries experiences to current ones. We’re collection. It’s been so rewarding to chapter of the NAACP and Nebraska Michael Krainak, an art critic, writer, availability. The series was remarkable in was a wonderful experience, and I’m exploring the important role that an art be able to include some of the most Appleseed collaborated with Sheldon and educator. As it ended up, we that it included live music and dance as delighted that so many members of our museum like Sheldon can play as a important pieces in this show—our to create a gallery conversation that staged three conversations in three well as actors, directors and crew. community were able to take part. center of community life. Hopper, a couple of Warhols, two major addressed the theme of art and social different galleries that focused on PT: So what actually happened in the PT: Is there a limit to the outreach PT: How do these types of Henri paintings, and O’Keeffe’s iconic justice. the risks, rewards, and challenges of galleries? It seems like you might run the opportunities that Sheldon is pursuing collaborations make you rethink New York, Night. I’ve also enjoyed PT: How did the Nebraska Humanities government sponsorship of the arts, risk, in a performance like this, of having across Lincoln, southeast Nebraska, traditional lectures? showcasing the reach that Henri had Council get involved in this year’s public art education, and professional many of Sheldon’s most significant and even the state? BR: The classroom is not for everyone. as a teacher by exhibiting works by community conversation? collaboration in the arts. artworks temporarily become stage BR: Not really. We have a programming Attending a slide lecture in the his many important students. I’ve had BR: Two active Sheldon Art Association PT: Didn’t the exhibition inspire other scenery or, at the very least, wallpaper. committee, civic engagement auditorium may work for some, not the great pleasure, too, of working members, Natalie Olson and Heather events as well? BR: The works were actually critical to committee, and a vigorous education others. We hope the variety of programs with private collectors who have been Thomas—both of whom are affiliated BKR: Yes—the most significant of these the pieces themselves, and I think that department, and we’re fully aware of the appeals to a broader variety of people. gracious enough to lend their works to with the Nebraska Humanities Council— was a series of one-act plays performed the audience was really respectful of need to reach out to groups not already PT: What has been the feedback from the exhibition. We have a very dedicated approached us about creating an event by the Angels Theatre Company. Angels, the performance space as a museum served by the museum. Engaging new, the series of events connected to art community here, and I’m proud to be diverse audiences—seeing new faces Partners and Adversaries? a part of it.

44 | artland artland | 45 Henry W. Grady was a dear friend to the Sheldon Museum of Art. Until his death on November 16, 2011, Henry worked hard to promote the work of the Magic Realist painter Charles Rain (a native of Lincoln) and that of the iconic fashion designer Bonnie Cashin, both of whom were close personal friends. Richard Sands Hay Henry was born in Braintree, Massachusetts, and was a graduate of Thayer 1923–2012 Academy and Harvard University. He served in the South Pacific in World War II. His close friend David Baum describes him best: “He was a truly unique man— kind, generous, with a brilliant mind and the courtly manner of a true gentleman.”

As an investment advisor in New York City, Henry Grady was involved in numerous charities, including the YWCA of the U.S.A., for which he served as president of the board for eighteen of his thirty-eight years as trustee. He was also a trustee of Parsons School of Design and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, serving as its treasurer and vice president from 1968 to 1993. He served on other boards, including one for a Midtown New York residence for working women. As advisor to the Bonnie Cashin Fund, he always kept Sheldon in mind for funding gifts. Henry established an endowment to fund the conservation and exhibition of Charles Rain’s paintings, which included naming a gallery at the museum after the artist and his sister, Charlotte Rain Koch. He also established the Charlotte Henry W. Grady Koch Foundation in his role as her executor, which made a significant gift in the 1980s toward an expansion of the Sheldon building. The Sheldon Museum of 1925–2011 Art is now home to forty-six works of art by Charles Rain and remains the single largest collection of his works. Henry made frequent visits to Nebraska and played a role in encouraging the retrospective exhibition and catalog Remembering Charles Rain: Selected Works from 1933 to 1973 in 2004. His friendship will be dearly missed.

Dick Hay was the photographic recorder of the active lives of the people and organizations of Lincoln, Nebraska. Dick and his camera were ubiquitous throughout our community. He was a generous, thoughtful, active citizen of Lincoln, and he expressed himself through his significant and generous financial support of myriad arts organizations throughout the city. Dick’s presence, his gentlemanly demeanor, his stories of his world travels, his kindness, and his generosity in so Charles Rain (American, 1911–1985). Figs and Tuberoses, 1957. Oil on board. many aspects of our lives are missed. Gift of Henry W. Grady in memory of Mr. and Mrs. Henry R. Luce. Ron Hull

46 | artland artland | 47 Contributors

Genevieve Ellerbee received her MA in Art History from The Executive M.B.A. from the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Pennsylvania State University and previously worked for the Daughters of the American Revolution Museum. She has been the Associate Registrar Sharon Kennedy is Curator of Cultural and Civic Engagement at the for the Sheldon Museum of Art for four years. Sheldon Museum of Art. She earned her MA in museum studies from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln with an emphasis in Art History. Kennedy Russel Erpelding has been the ARTreach Coordinator for the Museum had contributed essays to Dan Christensen-Forty Years of Painting (2009), of Nebraska Art for one year. He has a BA in both Art History and History Play’s the Thing: Reading the Art of Jun Kaneko (2010) and most recently from the University of Nebraska at Kearney. Geometric Unconscious: A Century of Abstraction. In 2003 she received the Museum Educator of the Year award from the Nebraska Art Teacher’s Janet L. Farber is Director of the Phillip Schrager Collection of Association. Contemporary Art in Omaha and a former curator of modern and contemporary art at Joslyn Art Museum, where she coauthored several Mike Krainak is the contributing arts editor and writer for the of the museum’s collection catalogues. Farber has published numerous Omaha Reader and an adjunct professor in film studies at the University articles of art criticism and written on contemporary artists such as of Nebraska–Omaha, where he has taught part time for the past 30 years. Gregory Barsamian, Jun Kaneko, and Karen Kunc. As a freelance writer in art and film, Krainak has published in regional magazines such as Kansas City’s Review and online for UNO’s Rhonda Garelick is the author of Rising Star: Dandyism, Gender and Journal of Religion and Film, for which he serves on the editorial board. Performance in the Fin de Siecle (Princeton 1998), Electric Salome: Loie Fuller’s Performance of Modernism (Princeton 2007) and the forthcoming Casey Logan lives in Omaha, Nebraska. He is the communications Antigone in Vogue: Coco Chanel and the Myths of Fashion (Random coordinator for Film Streams, Omaha’s nonprofit cinema dedicated to House). Her work has also appeared in scholarly journals, museum the presentation and discussion of film as an art form. He was formerly a catalogs, Art Press, New York Newsday, the New York Times, and the staff writer for The Pitch newsweekly in Kansas City. His writing has also International Herald Tribune. She is a professor of English and Performing appeared in Flak Magazine, Opium, The Reader, and the Arts at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. Omaha World-Herald, among other publications. Audrey Kauders has served as Director of the Museum of Nebraska A native of Lincoln, Pamela S. Thompson spent several years working in Art for ten years. Kauders was previously at the Joslyn Art Museum for politics in Washington, D.C. before returning to Nebraska to be a reporter 21 years, leaving as Deputy Director, and the Montgomery Museum and editor at the Lincoln Journal Star. She was the founding editor of of Fine Arts, Alabama, where she began her museum career in 1974. L Magazine and the managing editor of ONE Magazine. Pamela currently She studied at Adelphi University in Garden City, New York, earned a works at NET Television & Radio and is a frequent freelance writer, editor B.A. degree from Huntingdon College in Montgomery, Alabama, and an and theatre reviewer.

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Help us renovate the historic 1913 Post Office in North Platte to create The Prairie Arts Center— a home for exhibitions and hands-on programs in the arts and humanities.

To learn more, visit www.ArtsInNorthPlatte.com

artland | 49 Janet Smith Martha and John Eischeid Patron Members $250-$499 Alex Snell Dorene Eisentrager Jane and Tom Allman Sheldon Patricia Spitzer and Samuel Welsch Doug and Shawn Farrar Jami and Jonathan Beukelman* Bonnie Spomer Ellen and David Feingold David Buntain Art Association Members Suanne and Jim Stange Catherine and Terry Ferguson Christie and Pete Dionisopoulos^ Joan and Gary Stauffer Edward Forde Lana and Lon Flagtwet Sheldon Art Association Members Sara Bucy and Paul Steger Bets and Larry Frederick Kathy and Herb Friedman * Also a member of Young Art Circle Susan Stetina Pamela and Douglas Ganz Lilyan Fulginiti and Richard Perrin ^ Also a member of Forum Virginia Stevens Barbara Gehringer Carol Gendler Jo and Jack Stewart Dale Gibbs Joel and Chris Geyer Mary Stillwell-Edler and Frank Edler Joan Giesecke Jan and John Gradwohl Paula and Peter Stone Patricia and Bob Grimit Nancy and Andy Hadenfeldt Basic $15- $149 Debra and Ken Foster Susan Lawrence and David Manderscheid Heather Strait Mary and Gregory Heidrick Nancy and John Haessler Elizabeth Abel Sara Foxley Ann Martin and Scott Lewandowski Nancy and Tom Heiser R. Kay Horner Agnes Adams Laura Burton Franz Sandra Matthews Barbara Straus Sally and Wil Hergenrader Margery and Eames Irvin Shannon Anderson Sara and Robert Friedman Jean McBride and Paul Scott Stanfield Lanelle and Rich Herink Colleen Jones Dorothy C. Anderson Margaret and Robert Fuller Sara and Jim McLoughlin Mary Ann and Robert Sullivan Linda Hillegass and James McKee Dianne and Walker Kennedy Genie Bahm Eleanor Ganz Nancy Meeker Joan and Norris Swan Vicki and Richard Hoffmann Jan and Jim Kenner, Jr. Susan and Deon Bahr Rachel and James Garver Marilyn Metzger Thomas Thalken Carole and John Holland Karen and Jim Linder Pam Baker Leirion Gaylor Baird and Scott Baird* Irene Mews Jan and Steve Thelen Claire Hoppe Jean Martin Linck Camille and John Baldwin Linda Golden Arlen Meyer Dottie and Dick Thompson Ellan and Andrew Hove Marilyn and J.T. McGreer Erika Barnes Donna Gould Marjorie Mikasen and Mark Griep Pamela Thompson Laura M. Hurlbutt Sue Quambusch and Len Sloup Anne and Charles Barton and Matthew Wegener* Tom Milliken and Peter Heckman Julie and Mike Jacobson Dean Settle Grace Bauer Ann Gradwohl Venita and Robert Mittelstaedt Gladys “Gus” Thompson Jane A. Johnson Sarah and Lynn Sunderman Sarah Bauman and Miles Bryant Suzanne R. Graham Amelia Montes Vicky Weisz and Alan Tomkins Linda and Lynn Jones Carol and Art Thompson Jo and David Baxter Barbara A. Gray Mo Neal and Tom Buttars Ann Tyler Orville Jones III Benefactor Members $500-$999 Ellen and Pat Beans Priscilla and Sandy Grossbart Margaret and Jon Nelson Laurel Van Ham Audrey and Richard Kauders Mary and Doug Carper Phyllis Beck Paul Harrison Audrey Newton and Thomas Pappas Jeanne and Rich Kern Janet and Carl Eskridge Penny Berger Randy Hawthorne* Emma Nishimura* Shaun and Rusty Vanneman Vivian and Fred Kiechel^ Karen and John Janovy, Jr.^ Margaret Berry Eola and Ned Hedges Jim Novotny Alison VanVolkengurgh* Lisa and Buck Kiechel* Jean Jeffrey Patty Beutler John Heineman Gail and James O’Hanlon Mary and Lawrence Verschuur Virginia Knoll Ruth and Martin Massengale Patricia Birch and Roger Bruhn Jean Henderson Molly and Tim O’Holleran Bill Waddell Pat Leach and Jerry Johnston Barbara McCuen Ruth Boehmer Marilyn Henry Lauren Olson Max Wake Pam and Bob LeZotte Christian Petersen^ Marylouise Bookstrom Marjorie and Jim Hewitt Jan and Gerald Ott Janice Walker Pat and Max Linder Nancy and Ron Smith Lynne Boyer Dr. Robert Hillestad Deb and Stephen Paden Arlene Walton Joyce and Gil Lundstrom Patricia M. Polite Wade Jo Brown Jessica Coope and Stephen Hilliard Alice Henneman and Dave Palm Lisa and Mark Warren Denise and Tyler Mainquist Tracy Sanford and Matthew Wood*^ Mary and Roger Bruning Kimberly and Robert Hinrichs Marilyn Palmer Maria and John Wells Sally and Richard Marshall Curator’s Circle $1,000 Sally and Roger Buchholz Richard Hitz Corrinne Pedersen C. Wayne Williams Mary Ann Mignon Duane and Phyllis Acklie Linda Burchard Martha Horvay Michele and Luis Peon-Casanova Erin and Andrew Willis* Carren and Tice Miller Sue and Dan Anderson Maija Burdic* Victoria Hoyt* Karen and Jon Peppmuller Heather Lundine Daisy and Gates Minnick Catherine Angle^ Kathy Carlisle Emily Hruza Judith and Michael Peterson and Thomas Wilmoth* Jane and Randy Moody Marcia and Harley Bergmeyer^ Julie Carmer Julie Huddle and Doreen Moritz Jane Plagmann Susie and Rick Windle Ann and David Myers Debra and Robert Evnen Ann and Clarey Castner* Jayne and Todd Hutton Kathy Plunkett George Wolf and John Taylor Patte Newman and Darrell Klein Priscilla C. Grew Amy and Mark Cederdahl Thomas Iwand Helen Porter Cynthia and Henry Woods* Diane Oldfather Melanie and Jon Gross* Judith Cherry Barb and Bruce Johnson Kris and Tom Powers Birgit Young Missi and Prem Paul Linda Herman Peggy and Eli Chesen Deb Johnson Blanca Ramirez Salazar Donal Ziegenbein Peg and Larry Pelter Joyce and Jim Holtmeier^ Carmen and Tom Christie Catherine and Jeff Johnson* Kopperud Ramsey Linda and Larry Zillig Margene and Robert Phares Susan and John Hoppe David Clark and Jason Conrad* Barbara and Con Keating Morissa Raymond Christine and Art Zygielbaum Lonnie Pierson Dunbier Nelle and John-Paul Jamison^* Ruth and Noah Clayton* Mary Keef Joan Reist Contributor Members $150-$249 Susan Poser and Stephen DiMagno Susan and Gary Kuck Carol Connor Ruth and Jim Keene Laura Reznicek and Patrick Adams* Cori Amend and Ryan Sothan Patricia and Richard Rademacher Kathryn and Marc LeBaron^ Gerry Cox Sarah Kelen and Kenneth Bloom Carol and Roger Riefler Mary Arth Laurie Richards and Dan Worth Pam Manske Sally Cox Cassandra and Taylor Kohl* Liz Ring and Justin Carlson* Brenda and John Badami Laureen and Charles Riedesel Mary and Robert Nefsky^ Joyce Critchfield Jessica Kolterman* Sally and Lou Roper Joyce and Sam Baird Kim Robak and Bill Mueller Susan and Harvey Perlman Debra and Bob Culver, Jr. Jennifer and Jeff Koolen Sandy Rowson Margee Bartle and Terry Wittler Judy and Larry Roots Harriet and Tom Potter^ Bonnie and Richard Lois and Dick Dam Jane and Pete Kotsiopulos Cecilia Ruley Susan Belasco and Linck Johnson Lynn and Dana Roper Quinn Tammy and John Decker Elaine Kruse Carol Rundquist Linda and Ken Benton Judith and Joseph Ruffo Frances and Harry Seward Judith DeGraff Jane and Sushil Lacy Kathleen Rutledge and Ted Kooser Kris and John Bergmeyer* Janice Schad Nana G. H. Smith Sara and Steve DeLair Margaret and Danny Ladely Susan and Ron Samson Ann Brase Liz Shea-McCoy and Mike McCoy and James B. Milliken^ Sally and John Desmond Carrie Lamphere Barbara and Herbert Schliesser Kristine Brenneis Katherine and Anthony Starace Nancy and Dennis Stara Jean Detlefsen and Don Roth Melodee and David Landis Marilyn McDowell and Ed Schmidt and Robby Shortridge Sharon and Kenneth Stephan Judy and Norman Zlotsky Julie and Richard Diegel Cathy Lang and John Conley Katrinka Schnabel Hilgert Kim Russel and Dirk Brom Clare and Bobbie Sward Kit and Gerry Dimon Margaret and William Latta Gordon Scholz Kate and Robert Brooke Heather and William Thomas* Barbara Dinsdale Shannon and Hugh Lau Laura and John Shram Lana and Bob Browne John Tidball III Ervin Dixon Julia Lauer-Cheenne Suzanne Schreiber Lucy Buntain Comine Valery and Ron Wachter Rosemary and Art Dobson and Dominique Cheenne Diann Schroeder and Larry Comine Richard Wehrmeister Pam and Dan Doty Jan and Stephen Leeper Jill and Jeff Schroeder Judy and Robert Burton Elaine Westbrooks Shirley and Ralph Ebers Patricia and Larry Lewis Tracy and Will Scott* Mary and Douglas Campbell Beverly Westerberg Bill Etmund Peggy and Frederick Link Ricki Scully and Colin Mues* Jacque and Judy Carter Anne Whitney Elaine and Everett Evnen Margret and Eric Loftus Ingrid and Nader Sepahpur* Nancy Childs Sue and Larry Wood^ Janet Farber and Michael Krainak Patricia Lontor Susie Severson Janet Coleman Lucia Woods Lindley Annie Ferguson Sydney Lynch and Craig Roper Dottie Shapiro Jennifer Davidson Suzanne and Charles Wright and Jeremy Jamison Lauren Mabry* Anne Shaughnessy Lisa and Chip DeBuse Cynthia and Tom Fitchett Christin Mamiya Susan and Dean Sitzmann Gayle and Sarge Dubinsky Dika Eckersley

50 | artland artland | 51 Sheldon Art Association Members Sheldon Art Association Members * Also a member of Young Art Circle ^ Also a member of Forum

Director’s Circle $2,500 Nancy and Bob Dawson Marilyn and Brick Paulson Amy and Brian Baxter^ Marg and Ken Donlan Allison and Gary Petersen Linda Esterling and Steve Wake^ Rose Ann and Dawson Dowty Dorothy Pflug^ Candy and Tom Henning^ Connie and Todd Duncan Julie and Gale Pokorny Barbara and Dan Howard^ Marilyn Forke Vineta Rehm Natalie and Sam Olson^ Jeanne French Martha and Wally Richardson^ Ann Rawley^ Joan Furr Mary Riepma Ross Lisa and Tom Smith^ Linda and Tom Gapp Jane and Ky Rohman Sue and Tom Tallman^ Norman Geske Lois and Ron Roskens Karen and Rich Vierk^ Elinor Greenfield Dr. and Mrs. Gerald Rounsborg Nancy and John Wiederspan^ Sharon and Bill Griffin Carol Rustad Donna Woods and Jon Hinrichs^ David Harter Denise and Dan Scholz^ Trustee Circle $5,000 Barbara and Phil Heckman June and Paul Schorr III Anonymous^ Susan Johnson Mike Seacrest Karen and Robert Duncan^ Kim and Patrick Kenney Jean Shaw Rhonda and James Seacrest^ Kathy Kingery Ann and Frank Sidles^ Life Members Joan and David Kiple Stan Sipple Karen and David Asche Myrna and Bill Kubly Nancy and Ron Smith Joe Badami Chip Lienemann^ Drs. Margaret and Gregory Sutton Rich Bailey Del Lienemann^ D.R. Swanson Betty Lou and Tom Ball Dan Lienemann^ Dale Tinstman Marilyn Balliet Pat and Bill Lundak Lisa and Don Walla Patricia and Samuel Boon Karen Lusk Dr. and Mrs. Arthur Weaver Jody and Gene Bruening Kay and Jeffrey MacDonald Dr. James Weesner Marilyn and Chuck Burmeister Patricia Marvin Avery Woods Judy and Robert Burton Victoria and Robert Northrup^ Mary and Dale Young Sally and Jack Campbell Mary and Bill Nye Rosalind and James Carr Anne and Bud Pagel L. Dwight Cherry Jean and Dean Parrack Jan Christensen Phyllis and Gordon Pauley

Honor Someone Important: Make a Commemorative Gift

One of the greatest satisfactions our community and provides valuable Art was Kim Robert Cummings’ in charitable giving is the opportunity support for Sheldon. passion throughout his life, and he it provides to remember a special Recently, the museum has received created countless works in oil, pencil, individual. Celebrate a special person a number of gifts in memory of those and watercolor. An artist and storyteller, in your life by supporting the Sheldon’s whose affection for the museum is still he was the lead sound technician at the education and exhibition programs. felt after their passing. Lied Center for Performing Arts upon its Commemorative gifts—those in A dedicated docent for many years, opening in 1990 and worked there memory of someone who has died or Joyce Badami is remembered as an for years. in honor of one still living—are always enthusiastic, gracious, and intelligent Sharon Knapp is remembered as appropriate. Through such a gesture, volunteer. A trustee of the Nebraska a special person who was beloved you can honor relatives or recognize Art Association in the mid-1980s, by her friends. A Sheldon docent mentors and friends who have greatly she worked to develop new ways of and art-education advocate, she was shaped your life. Use the occasion of attracting younger members to the connected to the museum for an anniversary, birthday, graduation, or group. Soon thereafter, Sheldon’s many years. Discover! wedding to share your—and your loved summer concert series, Jazz in June, For more information on ones’—love for art and education with was launched. Joyce, who infused her commemorative giving, contact Director the wider world. Your gift expresses surroundings with her love of art, was a of Development Laura Resnicek at your own commitment to the future of strong advocate for art education. 402-472-1366 or [email protected].

1523 N. 33rd | Lincoln, NE | 68583 52 | artland Mon. - Sat. 10-4, Sun. 1-4

sa mars.indd 1 3/23/2012 4:07:48 PM William Copley (American, 1919–1996). Untitled, 1986. Silkscreen. Detail. Currently touring Nebraska with the 2011-12 Sheldon Statewide exhibition Commemorations: Art from Sheldon’s Permanent Collection.

William Copley (American, 1919–1996). Untitled, 1986. Silkscreen. Detail. Currently touring Nebraska with the 2011-12 Sheldon Statewide exhibition Commemorations: Art from Sheldon’s Permanent Collection. Sheldon Statewide

The mission of the Sheldon Statewide exhibition is to For information or to schedule a Sheldon Statewide serveSheldon communities Statewide throughout Nebraska by touring works exhibition in your town, contact Sarah Feit, Assistant from the permanent collection of the Sheldon Museum of Curator of Education, at [email protected] or 402-472-4524. The mission of the Sheldon Statewide exhibition is to For information or to schedule a Sheldon Statewide William Copley (American, 1919–1996). Untitled, 1986. Silkscreen. Detail. Art. Since its inception in 1987, the program has reached serve communities throughoutCurrently touring Nebraska Nebraska with the 2011-12 by Sheldontouring Statewide works exhibition Commemorations:exhibition Art from Sheldon’sin your Permanent town, Collection contact. Sarah Feit, Assistant over 275,000 people in 24 Nebraska communities. from the permanent collection of the Sheldon Museum of Curator of Education, at [email protected] or 402-472-4524. Art. Since its inception in 1987, the program has reached Sheldon Statewide over 275,000 people Thein 24mission Nebraska of the Sheldon communities. Statewide exhibition is to For information or to schedule a Sheldon Statewide serve communities throughout Nebraska by touring works exhibition in your town, contact Sarah Feit, Assistant Art in Society: Nebraska from the permanent collection of the Sheldon Museum of Curator of Education, at [email protected] or 402-472-4524. Art. Since its inception in 1987, the program has reached Art in Society: Nebraska provides 21st Century learning Contact Kate Marx at [email protected] to learn over 275,000 people in 24 Nebraska communities. experiencesArt in for Society: middle and high Nebraska school students in the how teachers and youth in your community can get communitiesArt in Society: to which Nebraska the Sheldon Statewide exhibition involved in the Sheldon Museum of Art’s statewide Art in Society: Nebraska provides 21st Century learning travels.Contact Nebraska Kate Marx teaching at [email protected] artists create and conduct to learn education program. experiences for middleArt inand Society: high Nebraska school provides students 21st Century in the learning residencyhowContact teachers Kate workshops Marx at and [email protected] youth that engagein your tocommunityyouth learn in activities can get that communities to whichexperiences the Sheldon for middle Statewide and high school exhibition students in the involvedhow teachers in and the youth Sheldon in your community Museum can get of Art’s statewide communities to which the Sheldon Statewide exhibition encourageinvolved in the critical Sheldon thinkingMuseum of Art’sand statewide creativity, foster dialogue travels. Nebraska teachingtravels. Nebraska artists teaching create artists and create conduct and conduct andeducationeducation collaboration, program. program. and inspire civic participation. residency workshopsresidency that engage workshops youth that engage in activities youth in activities that that encourage critical thinking and creativity, foster dialogue encourage critical thinkingand collaboration, and creativity, and inspire civicfoster participation. dialogue and collaboration, and inspire civic participation.