Past Exhibitions


Past Exhibitions


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  • The Shadow of the Natural

    through April 28

    UNL Honors Program students organized The Shadow of the Natural as part of Andrea Bolland's "Introduction to Art History: Renaissance to Modern" class. The exhibition, on display in the Focus Gallery, explores the issue of naturalism in photography and considers the close link between photography, nature, and truth.

    Is a photo a mere record of what is seen by the taker? Does the artfulness of a nature image belong to the natural object or to the photograph itself? Do such images play a role in constructing our idea of what nature, or human nature, is or should be?



  • My Nebraska/Nuestra Nebraska

    through March 17

    Made up of photography from Nebraska’s Latino youth, the exhibition is one of three photography exhibitions opening at the Sheldon in celebration of Lincoln’s third biennial Photofest.
    The exhibition will consist of juried photographs from Latino students across the state of Nebraska. The exhibition offers a glimpse into the daily lives of individuals in the Latino community and will travel to venues throughout Nebraska.

  • Modern Madness: The Armory Show Revisited

    through April 21

    In celebration of the 100th anniversary of the International Exhibition of Modern Art at Manhattan’s Sixty-Ninth Regiment Armory in February 1913, Sheldon Museum of Art presents Modern Madness: The Armory Show Revisited, an exhibition of the art that introduced Americans to European modernism. The 1913 exhibition instantly produced controversy: students publicly burned copies of the artwork on display and politicians inveighed against the artists’ morality, all the while salacious newspaper stories supplied months of coverage.

  • Making a Presence: F. Holland Day in Artistic Photography

    through April 28

    F. Holland Day, a preeminent figure in American pictorialist photography, was a fascinating character. Drawn from a variety of distinguished museum collections, the photographs in Making a Presence: F. Holland Day in Artistic Photography illuminate the multifaceted persona that Day created in his own art and in photographs taken of him by his peers.

  • Five Decades of Collecting

    through April 21

    Five Decades of Collecting commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Sheldon Museum of Art’s building, which was designed by renowned architect Philip Johnson and opened in 1963. Each work in the exhibition was created and acquired after 1960.

    The exhibition reflects art movements and trends from this period as well as museum directions in collecting. The exhibition highlights important gifts to the museum and draws attention to areas of strength in its holdings. The installation also celebrates new acquisitions and important works that have not recently been on view.

  • Encounters: Photography from the Sheldon Museum of Art

    through April 28

    In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Sheldon Museum of Art’s landmark Philip Johnson building and the 125th anniversary of the University of Nebraska’s art collection, the museum has organized an exhibition showcasing its remarkable photography holdings, which number nearly 2,500 pieces. Encounters: Photography from the Sheldon Museum of Art features approximately 110 historically canonic photographs from the mid-19th century to the present, including new acquisitions, rarely seen treasures, and recognized masterpieces by Berenice Abbott, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Gertrude Käsebier, André Kertész, Robert Mapplethorpe, Yinka Shonibare, and Carrie Mae Weems, among others.

  • Women Call for Peace: Global Vistas

    September 18, 2012 thru January 13, 2013

    Works by thirteen distinguished artists of diverse religious beliefs and ethnic heritage—including some who have personally encountered violence—address factors associated with conflict, such as war, race, gender, and religion.

  • The American Mountain Bicycle

    July 13, 2012 thru September 30, 2012

    While mountain biking is a popular pastime for thrill-seekers today, it was relatively unheard of until the mid-1980s. Before then, a few industrious daredevils in Marin County, California, built custom bikes to zoom around the mountainous terrain where they lived. These visionary individuals combined engineering ingenuity with an artistic eye, using found parts to create durable bicycles that could withstand the bumps and tumbles of downhill racing. This summer, some of these early mountain bikes, on loan from the Monkey Wrench collection, will be on view in the Great Hall.

  • The Geometric Unconscious: A Century of Abstraction

    Oct. 5, 2012 - Jan. 20, 2013

    The Geometric Unconscious: A Century of Abstraction at the Sheldon Museum of Art celebrates the museum’s, broad holdings of works in the mode of geometric abstraction. Spanning more than one hundred years, these objects encouraged, even demanded, a rethinking of the category we call geometric abstraction.

  • A Legacy of Giving: The Anna & Frank Hall Collection

    June 8, 2012 thru September 16, 2012

    Anna and Frank Hall were instrumental in establishing the forerunner of today's Sheldon Art Association, and the couple built a private collection that helped form the foundation of Sheldon's renowned holdings. View highlights from the Halls' personal collection and acquisitions through their charitable trust, including works by artists such as Deborah Butterfield, Willem de Kooning, Marsden Hartley, Robert Henri, and Dorothea Lange.

  • Turning Inside Out: Video Art by Joan Jonas, Nam June Paik, and Jennifer Steinkamp

    June 1, 2012 thru September 9, 2012

    This year's Sheldon biennial invitational exhibition, Turning Inside Out, explores the world of video through three seminal works. The pioneering videos Vertical Roll and Global Groove offer a subversive view of the power of television in the 1970s. Stimulating soundtracks, repetitive rhythms, and evocative visuals compel viewers to participate. Jennifer Steinkamp's site-specific, computer-generated videos synthesize the real and the virtual, dissolving architectural space into an experience filled with color, light, and motion.

  • The Studio Glass Movement: Selections from the Esterling-Wake Collection

    April 6, 2012 thru June 3, 2012

    Approximately thirty works will be on view including those by glass pioneer Harvey Littleton whose workshops in 1962 encouraged artists to design and construct glass outside the factory setting. The rich creative energy the studio glass movement unleashed continues to flourish today as increasing numbers of artists discover glass as a compelling medium.

  • Sunrise and Moonset in Provincetown

    February 24, 2012 thru May 20, 2012

    In the summer of 1916, the small village of Provincetown, Massachusetts, located on the tip of Cape Cod, was considered the largest art colony in the world. Approximately 600 American artists, playwrights, and writers converged on the small fishing village to bask in its light and beauty. Here works by avant-garde artists hang alongside those of artists who were aligned with more conservative academic institutions. Together, they demonstrate the multiple styles that were fostered within this exuberant creative community.

  • All is Pretty: Warhol Polaroids

    February 3, 2012 thru April 15, 2012

    Coinciding with the 25th anniversary of Warhol’s death in February 1987, the exhibition debuts photographs donated to the Sheldon Museum of Art in 2008 by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

  • Partners and Adversaries: The Art of Collaboration

    February 3, 2012 thru May 27, 2012

    Drawn largely from the Sheldon Museum of Art’s permanent collection, Partners and Adversaries: The Art of Collaboration explores the often productive—and sometimes contentious—world of artistic partnerships.

  • Railroads and the Making of Modern America

    January 20, 2012 thru May 27, 2012

    Railroads and the Making of Modern America features fifty works from the Sheldon Museum of Art’s permanent collection—as well as a handful of local loans—and examines the ways artists captured and shaped the modern ideas and practices made possible by the railroad, emphasizing the broader cross-border movements and their global consequences.

  • Media Revolution: Early Prints from the Sheldon's Vault

    December 9, 2011 thru February 19, 2012

    This exhibition brings to light little-seen masterpieces from the Sheldon Museum of Art's collection vault. Early modern woodcuts, engravings, and etchings are all on display.

  • Richmond Barthé

    October 7, 2011 thru January 15, 2012

    An active member of Harlem’s artistic renaissance, Richmond Barthé created compelling works that emphasize the expressive potential of the body’s movement and physiognomy.

  • Viet Nam, Nebraska

    September 23, 2011 thru January 8, 2012

    California artist Binh Danh is interested in the history of the land, especially to those who have been uprooted from their first homes. As a Vietnamese refugee who arrived in the US in 1979 at the age of 2, Danh believes resettling means carrying one’s cultural tools with them in order to “remake a new land in our image.” Through this exhibition he hopes explore the history of the Vietnamese community in Lancaster county. From the first to the last settler, this history project will take us to contemporary times.

  • Trenton Doyle Hancock: Fix

    August 12, 2011 thru October 23, 2011

    The Sheldon will show all eighteen prints from Doyle’s Fix portfolio—a collaboration with the Brodsky Center for Innovative Editions at New Jersey’s Rutgers University and a recent acquisition for the museum—as part of its focus on African American artists.