Art Adventure in Lincoln

On my last day in Lincoln, NE, my friend and I had a quick breakfast and then headed off to the Great Plains Art Museum. I've never been to this museum even though I have visited Lincoln many times.

Outside the museum we found sculptures related to the Lewis and Clark expedition.

Inside we found two major exhibits. The first was called Narrow the Horizon and featured art that shows the Big Sky of the Great Plains.

Here is an example of the art we saw. I regret I didn't do a good job of documenting the artist for this piece.

The lower level of the museum has an exhibit related to the making of Western movies.

One piece which took our eyes was this sculpture called He Who Taunts the Enemy. The sculptor is Michael Boyette. One very interesting thing about this sculpture is how some parts are also painted.

For example, above is a moccasin.

And the delightful piece above is a Remington.

From this museum we walked across the street to the Sheldon Art Museum.

The first exhibit we saw was created by ///. This photographer has done photographs in Guatemala over a period of about 40 years. One interesting part of this exhibit showed the same people from two different times. The signage explained he made prints of his 1970s work and then went back to Guatemala recently to find the same persons.

Then we walked across the hall to another gallery which featured the work of forgotten women artists.

Interestingly both had Minnesota connections. Laging arrived in Lincoln when her husband obtained a faculty position within the Department of Art at the University of Nebraska. Her work centered on human figures.
Her first position was within a psychiatric facility in Lincoln. Thereafter, she always retained an interest in working with persons with disabilities even though she later became part of the Interior Design faculty at the University of Nebraska.

Another exhibit was called Things Speak.  Because we both like quilts we were intrigued by this one made from silk cigar wrappers.

Below is a close up of a section of this quilt.

The quilt is attributed to Henrietta Smith Nance and Mildred Nance Behrendt, whom I am guessing are mother and daughter.

Another interesting part of this exhibit related to telephones. A man who ran a mortuary was very upset when a friend died; he had promised to do this person's funeral. However, the operator connected the call from the family to another mortuary. This caused the mortuary director to begin the quest for telephones to dial to specific number rather than having an operator connect the phone call.

From the Sheldon we walked to restaurant called Sebastian's Table. This is a tapa restaurant -- tapas being something neither of us had tried before.

Our last stop was within a fairly new park in Lincoln, called Union Plaza. We wanted to examine the sculpture there better than we had been able to see why driving by.

It took me a bit of internet research to find out more about this. The name is Colossus and it the work a New York City sculpture, James Tyler. It is made of 300 specially shaped bricks.

Antelope Creek flows through this area. This is part of a flood control project in Lincoln. And this got a good test a couple days before my arrival when Lincoln received 9 inches (229 mm) of rain in 20 hours.

All in all a great day in Lincoln, made even better by lovely autumn weather and good company.