The Ruth and Seymour Landfield Atrium, Xcel Energy Gallery, and Starion Bank Gallery
Fifty Years of Photography and Design is a retrospective exhibition celebrating Murray Lemley’s artistic career. The exhibit features a wide range of imagery, including extensive black-and-white analogue street photography from Europe in the 1970s and 80s, documentary portrait studies of people from his hometown of Hope, powerful portraits of Native Americans on the Fort Berthold Reservation, and a radical transition in later years to creating modern Polaroid images he calls “STREET COLLAGE GRAFFITI.” With this more recent work, he has, in one sense, returned to the streets he haunted in Europe in the 1970s, but in vivid color and with a new point of view and style.
After leaving his home on the family farm near Hope, Lemley studied architecture at North Dakota State University, but after disagreements with his design professor, he shifted his focus to photography, journalism, graphic design, and anti-establishment activism. This journey inspired him to launch three independent magazines, work in radio, and edit the controversial yearbook The Last Picture Book, which famously omitted the name of the university from its cover and led to a temporary discontinuation of yearbooks at NDSU. Despite amassing double the required credits for a degree, his political activism resulted in the administration, in an act of petty revenge, from granting him a degree.
Lemley’s photography career took off after two pivotal experiences in the early 70s: photographing for the Concordia College May Seminars Abroad and attending the Apeiron Photo Workshops in New York, which deepened his creative vision and marked a shift from photojournalism to more artistic photography. His design career flourished as well, working at Atomic Press in Seattle and later in Amsterdam, where he designed books for artists and photographers. After the years in Seattle and San Francisco Lemley moved to Amsterdam in the early 90s and has lived primarily in Europe ever since. During his early years there, Lemley worked at many things from construction to graphic design and art. He managed an art gallery for a prolific painter and designed eight books for artists and photographers, many of which are featured in this retrospective exhibition at Plains Art Museum. Lemley has had several exhibitions of this photography at the Plains as well at Suzanne Biederberg Gallery, Ververs Gallery and the Zamen Art Gallery.
Gallery admission is free every day of the week. Generous support provided by Art Bridges Foundation’s Access for All program; the North Dakota Council on the Arts, which receives funding from the state legislature and the National Endowment for the Arts; the Arts Partnership, with support from the Cities of Fargo, Moorhead and West Fargo; the McKnight Foundation; The FUNd at Plains Art Museum; Giving Hearts Day donors; Spring Gala sponsors; and hundreds of Plains Art Museum members like you.
top: Murray Lemley, Amsterdam, 2016, SX-70 Polaroid. Courtesy of the artist • bottom: Murray Lemley, Sue, New York City, 1978, 14 x 11 in., Black and white photograph, Plains Art Museum Permanent Collection.
Opening Reception
Thursday, July 3, 6-8 PM, Free
Celebrate the opening of Murray Lemley: Fifty Years of Photography and Design, featuring five decades of photography. Enjoy light refreshments, meet members of the curatorial team, the museum’s senior staff, and experience an exhibition that honors memory, place, and visual storytelling.
Artist Talk: Murray Lemley
Thursday, August 21, 6-7 PM, Free
Join us for an artist talk on Thursday, August 21, from 6-7 p.m. Life-long artist, Murray Lemley, will dive into his retrospective Fifty Years of Photography and Design – on view until January 4, 2026. Free with registration.