2020 November Press Releases

Plains Art Museum to Open High Visibility

Press Release
For Immediate Release (November 2020)

Fargo, North Dakota – Plains Art Museum presents High Visibility: On Location in Rural America and Indian Country from November 23, 2020 through May 30th, 2021. This landmark project will include major new works by several regional and national contemporary artists meaningfully working and responding to rural spaces. High Visibility will be displayed in both Fred Donath Jr. Memorial Gallery and the William and Anna Jane Schlossman Gallery after over two years of development.

High Visibility is a project led by the Museum and independent curator, writer and artist Matthew Fluharty of Art of the Rural. Included are a diverse range of artworks, practices, and histories from rural America and Native Nations where location is central to the artists’ creative practices, with a primary, but not exclusive, focus on the Plains region. National and Regional multi-disciplinary contemporary artists include M12, Raven Chacon, Lisa Bergh and Andrew Nordin, Erika Nelson, Jason Vaughn, Aaron Spangler, Cannupa Hanska Luger, and Athena LaTocha.

A line-up of knowledge-building programs and events that are inclusive, expansive, and multivocal in essence is integral to High Visibility. Lead project collaborator, Art of the Rural (in association with other national arts groups), will work with the Museum to launch a vital podcast series, a printed newspaper with essays on each work and the context for the exhibition, and a series of engaging artist-led talks.

Generous support for this ambitious exhibition is provided from both the Andy Warhol Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Curatorial Team Leader Matthew Fluharty is a visual artist, writer, and field-based researcher living in Winona, Minnesota. He is the Executive Director of Art of the Rural, a member of M12 Studio, and he serves on the Board of Directors for Common Field. Fluharty’s poetry and essays have been widely published in the US and abroad and are present within the field-establishing publication A Decade of Country Hits: Art on the Rural Frontier (Jam Sam, 2014), as well as in To Make a Public: Temporary Art Review 2011-2016. His collaborations with M12 Studio have recently been featured at the Santa Fe Art Institute, Center for Contemporary Art (Santa Fe), and the Iowa State Fair. His multidisciplinary collaboration with Jesse Vogler in the American Bottom region of the Mississippi River was recently the subject of an exhibition at Central Features in Albuquerque and the recipient of a grant from the Mellon Foundation.

Plains Art Museum, the largest and only accredited art museum in North Dakota, is your nonprofit art museum and education center, supported by over 800 individuals and organizations. The Museum and its Katherine Kilbourne Burgum Center for Creativity are located at 704 First Avenue North in downtown Fargo. For more information about visiting or supporting your art museum, visit plainsart.org.

Now on View at Plains Art Museum: To See What I Could See

Press Release
For Immediate Release (November 2020)

Fargo, North Dakota – Plains Art Museum announces To See What I Could See: An Examination of Contemporary Printmaking, now on view in its Jane L. Stern Gallery through March 17, 2021.

Drawn from the Museum’s permanent collection – one of the Fargo region’s greatest cultural treasures – the exhibition demystifies the fine art of printmaking through the avenues of formalism, collaboration, narration, and process. While, conceptually simple – creating multiples of an image through a printing press – it demonstrates the myriad of results only achieved through the printmaking process offering both artist and audiences its technical complexity.

To See What I Could See: An Examination of Contemporary Printmaking is curated by Plains Art Museum Manager of Hannaher’s, Inc. Print Studio Amanda Heidt with support from Museum Director Andy Maus, Associate Curator of Exhibitions & Collections Tasha Kubesh, Director of Curatorial & Operational Logistics Steve Jacobs, Associate Registrar Kaitlin Molden, and installation team member Tessa Wick. We would like to give a special thank you to artist DeborahMae Broad for giving permission to use the title of her etching as the title for this exhibition.

This exhibition is made possible through generous support from PlainsArt4All members and donors, and our Organizational Partners. Additional support provided by The McKnight Foundation, Bush Foundation, The Arts Partnership, The FUNd at Plains Art Museum, and the North Dakota Council on the Arts, which receives funds from the North Dakota Legislature and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Plains Art Museum, the largest and only accredited art museum in North Dakota, is your nonprofit art museum and education center, supported by over 800 individuals and organizations. The Museum and its Katherine Kilbourne Burgum Center for Creativity are located at 704 First Avenue North in downtown Fargo. For more information about visiting or supporting your art museum, visit plainsart.org.