Murray Lemley

Fifty Years of Photography and Design

July 5, 2025 - January 4, 2026

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.

Curatorial Public Tour
Thursday, August 7, 6-6:45 PM, Free

This curator-led tour highlights Lemley’s long history with Plains Art Museum as well as his large body of photographs that capture the quiet poetry of everyday life—from urban streets to rural landscapes.

Ongoing Exhibitions

Convergence:

Ongoing
Convergence:
Hope, Love, Resilience, Rest, Community

This installation was created specifically for the atrium at Plains Art Museum as part of the exhibition Convergence: Health & Creativity. Inspired by Labovitz’s research on the psychological benefits of art, this piece celebrates the connection between art and well-being.

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S.P.A.C.E. 2024-2026

Ongoing
S.P.A.C.E. 2024-2026

The S.P.A.C.E. (Sculpture Pad Art Collaborative Experiment) project is a public art initiative led by Plains Art Museum in collaboration with NDSU, MSUM, and Concordia College. Sculptures are displayed for two years.

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No Time For Despair

Ongoing
No Time For Despair

To say that right now is the ideal time to make art that speaks directly to the people about social justice is an understatement. Because the very nature of art is to undertake or assume the role of a healer by shading light on the human condition.

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Bee in Flight

Ongoing
Bee in Flight

Community artist and school art teacher MeLissa Kossick, who guides youth classes at the Museum on art, gardens, and pollinators, has created an enchanting mosaic design in the Creativity Pathway in the Serkland Gallery called Bee in Flight.

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Fragile Preservation

Ongoing
Fragile Preservation
A Tallgrass Community

While the Tallgrass Prairie is a community made up of a great diversity of species, Fragile Preservation represents a selection of them.

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