The Great Plains Art Museum will host a First Friday pop up art and photo exhibition created by BlackisBeautifulNE (BIBNE) celebrating Black History Month and Black artists from Nebraska. The BIBNE non-profit was created in 2021 to show positive representation of Black beauty, culture, and to give back to the community through the creation of annual scholarships.

The art will be available for purchase with a portion of the proceeds donated to BIBNE. There will also be a raffle for prizes/gift cards from Black owned businesses. Proceeds from the raffle will be used to fund annual scholarships and additional community projects.

Artists include:
Jevon Woods
Josh Redwine
Jelani Billie-Soto
Mohamed Komi
Farrakhan Muhammed
Samuel Mfinanga
Mikayah Worthon
Michelle Reese
Brandy McWilliams
X Ree

Also on display:
“Water in a Dry Land”
January 24–July 8, 2023

“Water in a Dry Land” considers our complex relationship with water and the many essential roles it plays in the Great Plains region. Utilizing artwork from the museum’s permanent collection, this exhibition features various cultural and artistic perspectives on the use of water, explores water management and agricultural practices, and addresses the effects of precipitation, drought, and flooding on the land.

Lower-level gallery:
In “Field Guide to a Hybrid Landscape,” Dana Fritz’s photographs show the forces that shaped the Bessey Ranger District of the Nebraska National Forest and Grasslands, once the world’s largest hand-planted forest. Wind, water, planting, thinning, burning, decomposing, and sowing all contribute to the environmental history of this conifer forest overlaid onto a semi-arid grassland in an effort to create a timber industry and change the local climate.

Fritz is Hixson-Lied Professor of Art at UNL. She uses photography to investigate the ways we shape and represent the natural world in cultivated and constructed landscapes. She is the author of “Terraria Gigantica: The World under Glass” (University of New Mexico Press, 2017) and “Field Guide to a Hybrid Landscape” (University of Nebraska Press in January 2023).