Past Exhibitions

Water Talks features photographs of Indigenous communities in Standing Rock and the Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve in Mexico affected by water access and sustainability issues.

This fall, Plains Art Museum will feature selections from our Permanent Collection relating to aspects of the supernatural.

Anna Johnson bridges the gap between the world she lives in and the culture she came from. When she feels or experiences discrimination, she is moved to have an impact on social injustice, religion and spirituality, and other issues that Native Americans, women, and people everywhere face daily.

This exhibition highlights exemplary projects from HCE 743: Experiential Sketching, a course led by architect and professor Nicholas Wickersham at North Dakota State University.

Over the past two decades, Smith has documented significant cultural shifts in academic and public libraries, primarily across the United States, Aotearoa/New Zealand, and the South Pacific. Her work highlights the library’s role in knowledge stewardship, capturing the evolution from traditional card catalogs and stacks to digitization and artificial intelligence.

This year’s 2024 Spring Gala Art Auction will fill you with wonder and awe, as you peruse over 50 works by talented artists from all over the country.

Ghost Writing is a compelling, mid-career retrospective showcasing work by Jaque Fragua, a contemporary artist from Jemez Pueblo, New Mexico. Fragua works in a diverse array of media, including digital painting, sculpture, installation, and public art. His distinct style is characterized by bold colors and mark-making as well as thoughtful approach to appropriation.

Emma Katka, a self-taught artist from Grand Forks, ND, seeks solace through emotive photography and collage. Her stomping grounds for creation are often abandoned buildings, the open prairie, old magazines, and wherever inspiration illuminates moments within daily life.

This exhibition celebrates the vision, ingenuity, and talent of North Dakota teen artists. Since 2015, Plains Art Museum and the Red River Valley Writing Project have partnered to serve as the state affiliate for the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards.

Donald D. Powell, a Fargo native, was a prolific, award-winning architect and a keen art collector. Powell amassed a sizeable collection of European and American modern art in an array of media. He donated much of his impressive collection to the Plains Art Museum in several installments in 1999, 2000, 2002-3, 2005-9, and 2013.

Art Camp, a celebration of regional student artists, begins on Friday, April 11th with activities for high school students and teachers at NDSU’s Renaissance Hall in downtown Fargo (across the street from the museum). Organized by NDSU’s School of Design, Architecture and Art (SoDAA).

The Queer Ecology Hanky Project (QEHP) is an ongoing traveling exhibition organized by Vee Adams and Mary Tremonte that features over one hundred and twenty artists from across North America.

The Hands of Hope exhibition in our café space showcases artwork by children and families in our community in honor of National Crime Victims’ Rights Week (April 6-12). These canvases hold 884 handprints, each representing a life touched by the Red River Children’s Advocacy Center in 2023.

John Nellermoe’s lake paintings intersect realism and abstraction with reverence to his environment and playful respect to the picture plane. Through dissecting the plane into strips of land, water and sky while pushing and pulling space, Nellermoe’s work simultaneously disorients and calms.