Fred Donath Jr. Memorial and William and Anna Jane Schlossman Galleries
A multi-year project in creation that will result in a two-gallery exhibition and several programs, High Visibility: On Location in Rural America and Indian Country is diverse in content and media. Visitors will engage with installations, performance works, interdisciplinary work, alongside traditional 2 and 3-dimensional pieces chosen to reflect the myriad dialogues of perceptions, realities, and issues of rural life, as well as the social, cultural, and historical conditions which shape their expression. Plains Art Museum and independent curator, writer and artist Matthew Fluharty present a diverse range of artworks, practices, and histories from rural America and Native Nations where rural location is sincerely central to the artist’s creative practice, 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 strategies, programs and events that are inclusive, expansive, and multivocal in essence is integral to the High Visibility. Lead project collaborator Art of the Rural (in collaboration with M12 Studio and 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.
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.
