Magic and Loss: Charley Friedman and Nancy Friedemann-Sánchez
May 3-July 20, 2025
Magic and Loss is a collaborative exhibition by married artists Charley Friedman and Nancy Friedemann-Sánchez exploring themes of creation, destruction, and transformation through distinct but interconnected bodies of work. Together, their work creates a mystically transformed space in the Museum’s new John and Elizabeth Lauritzen Foundation Gallery for an immersive and contemplative moment that must be experienced to be understood.
Photograph © Nic Lehoux
Eliza Hardy Jones: Song Quilts
May 3-August 10, 2025
On loan from the International Quilt Museum in Lincoln, Nebraska, this temporary exhibition by musician and quiltmaker Eliza Hardy Jones weaves music and visual arts together through textiles. Inspired and “composed” by folk music sung in Nebraska and across the world, Song Quilts allows visitors to experience a fusion of sight and sound by listening to the music that inspired every pattern, stitch, and color.
Photograph © Nic Lehoux
Plein Air Paintings from the Flatwater Folk Art Museum
May 3-August 24, 2025
This collection, borrowed from the Flatwater Folk Art Museum in Brownville, Nebraska, showcases the intimate and expressive qualities of painting outdoors, including several Nebraska artists, such as Beth Cole, Keith Jacobshagen, Stephen Dinsmore, Tom Palmerton, Tim Klunder, and Robert Gilder, within the context of the American plein-air tradition.
Photograph © Nic Lehoux
Wesaam Al-Badry: The Labor of Belonging
May 3-September 21, 2025
For his first solo museum exhibition, Wesaam Al-Badry presents a new photography project of Nebraskans. The project aims to consider place as a component of human identity while celebrating survival, beauty, and belonging. This exhibition includes a selection of twenty photographs from a project Al-Badry began in 2024 to reflect the vibrant culture of his adopted home. What has emerged is a portrait of Nebraska that is familiar, surprising, and unabashedly authentic.
Photograph © Nic Lehoux
Barbara Takenaga, Round Trip Time, 2024, acrylic on wood panels Museum purchase made possible by te Cliff and Mary Hillegass Bequest[/caption]
In Search of Ourselves: A Reinstallation of the Museum of Nebraska Art’s Permanent Collection
May 3, 2025- July 2027
This reinstallation of MONA’s permanent collection surveys the entirety of the collection through a thematic lens—a significant shift from the Museum’s previous approach of presenting the collection chronologically by four eras: artist-explorers, early Nebraskans, modern artists, and art of today. In Search of Ourselves dives deeply into various areas of the permanent collection to explore the many ways “Nebraska art” has been defined through the Museum’s collecting practices.
Sponsored by The Terra Foundation for American Art, established in 1978 and with offices in Chicago and Paris, the foundation supports organizations and individuals locally and globally through its grant program, collection, and initiatives. Its aim is to foster intercultural dialogues and encourage transformative practices that expand narratives of American art.
Susan Knight: Groundwater Magic
Permanent Installation
Groundwater Magic considers the concept of porosity as a critical factor in determining the quality, quantity, and accessibility of groundwater. Through Knight’s examination of porosity through her chosen material, porosity takes on additional meaning as a literal and figurative opening to more possibilities.
