LOWER-LEVEL GALLERY
Watershed: Elizabeth Rubendall Artist-in-Residence Amanda Maciuba
April 4–September 20, 2025
Amanda Maciuba’s work is an exploration of the visible and invisible marks of human hands on the landscape. Her practice investigates human relationships with the environment over time, forefronting the impacts of human-driven climate change. She exposes and reconsiders the layered histories of specific locations: from the geologic forces that shaped the land, to impacts of Western colonialism, to the current practices of development, destruction, and restoration by the local communities she interacts with every day. Bodies of water often act as anchors for Maciuba’s creative investigation. Watershed is an exhibition of prints, artist’s books, and installations that consider how water shapes human life and how our actions impact river environments in return.
Maciuba is the Great Plains Art Museum’s 2025 Elizabeth Rubendall Artist in Residence. Visit the artist during her residency at the museum from April 8 to 19. Learn more about the residency and scheduled events here.
Artwork: Amanda Maciuba, Trace II (Nemaha, Nebraska), 2023, monotype and relief, 17 x 23 inches, photo by Aaron Paden.
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FIRST-FLOOR GALLERIES
Reflections of Our People, Our Ways, Our Land
September 5–December 20, 2025
Reflections of Our People, Our Ways, Our Land will be the first exhibition to center Otoe-Missouria artists and their creative work. Twenty-five Otoe-Missouria artists, ranging from traditional to contemporary and working in any medium, were selected to co-create an art exhibition reflecting on healing, reconciliation, and reconnecting to the land. Jessica Moore Harjo, Ph.D. (Otoe-Missouria/Osage/Pawnee), is the curatorial director for this exhibition.
Above: deana harragarra waters, Otoe-Missouria/Kiowa, Grandpa Mose: Hereditary Chief and Honorary Colonel, 2025, fiber art, 37 ¾ x 27 ½ inches, photo by Bill Ganzel, Ganzel Group Communications, © deana harragarra waters
Banner: Nichole DeRoin-Davidson, Otoe-Missouria/Choctaw, The Land Wants Us Back, 2025, size 11 cut glass seed beads, 24k gold beads, commercial deer hide, 5 ½ x 8 ½ inches, photo by Bill Ganzel, Ganzel Group Communications, © Nichole DeRoin-Davidson
Mezzanine Gallery
Big Blue Reservation: Struggles and Hope of the Otoe-Missouria Tribe
September 5–December 20, 2025
One hundred seventy years ago, the Treaty of 1854 was passed by Congress, authorizing the move of the Otoe-Missouria Tribe to the Big Blue Reservation in Gage County, Nebraska. The Tribe watched as acre by acre of their land was sold off by the government and treaties were broken. In 1881, the Tribe was moved from this reservation to Red Rock, Oklahoma.
The Gage County Historical Society, along with the Otoe-Missouria Tribe, arranged a summer exhibit in 2024 to educate the public about this important part of American history. The Otoe-Missouria Tribe once called Southeast Nebraska home. Through the displacement of the people during the 1800s, they lost sacred traditions. Big Blue Reservation: Struggles and Hope of the Otoe-Missouria Tribe includes their voices of how that loss affected them into the present.
The Tribe and the Society wanted this exhibit to travel to other institutions to provide a cultural history of Nebraska, utilizing the Tribe’s perspective. As a result of this hard work, the Gage County Historical Society’s traveling exhibit will open in the Great Plains Art Museum’s mezzanine gallery. This exhibit is on view in conjunction with Reflections of Our People, Our Ways, Our Land.
