First Floor Galleries
Jennifer Angus: Like a Moth to the Flame
August 7–December 19, 2026
Jennifer Angus creates site-specific, immersive art installations that utilize dead and dried insect specimens to create environments that are often described as otherworldly, magical, and sometimes uncomfortable. Over time, Angus’s work has evolved to consider issues related to the environment and the important role insects play within it.
Like a Moth to the Flame explores the Great Plains region, an ecosystem home to the Sandhill crane migration, American bison, mountain lions, foxes, badgers, and countless other mammals. Less visible, though no less essential, are the nearly 30,000 insect species that inhabit this landscape, most living unseen beneath leaves, within soil, and among grasses. This exhibition invites visitors into that hidden world, asking them to imagine themselves insect-sized, dwarfed by the sculptural works around them. Within this immersive environment, the extraordinary adaptability of insects becomes visible, revealing how these small creatures sustain the intricate balance of an interconnected ecosystem.
Angus is a professor of Design Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Described by Art Daily as “one of the top contemporary installation artists in the country,” Angus has exhibited widely across the United States, being one of nine artists selected for the landmark exhibition WONDER at the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery in 2015.
This exhibition at the Great Plains Art Museum is presented in collaboration with CAREMI—the Community for Arthropod Research, Education, and Materials Innovation—a transdisciplinary initiative at UNL that brings together researchers, engineers, artists, educators, students, and community members to harness the diversity and resilience of arthropods as sources of knowledge, inspiration, and innovation.
This exhibition is supported by the Nebraska Arts Council and the Nebraska Cultural Endowment.
Banner: Jennifer Angus, Eat Me, Drink Me, 2022, insects, pins, bell jars, chandeliers, taxidermy (property of BYU), chinaware, etc. Kimball Art Center, Park City, UT. Image courtesy of the artist.
Above: Jennifer Angus, Like a Moth to the Flame, 2026, insects, pins, chandelier, taxidermy, chinaware, etc.
Aug. 19 opening reception
Mezzanine Gallery
Moving with the Hydrocommons
August 7-December 19, 2026
A commons is a shared resource that is vital to collective life and the relations such a resource instantiates. The “hydrocommons” extends this idea to water. Moving with the Hydrocommons is an exploration of water and bodies within, around, and beyond the Great Plains. Following the inquiry, “What does water teach?” and drawing from collected vignettes, personal reflections, and contextual research, a screendance was choreographed as an exploration of water across bodies—social, historical, geographic, sensorial. A companion zine was composed to share the contributed narratives, movement and sensory scores, and other watery notations for moving with the hydrocommons.
Moving with the Hydrocommons is Mac Kelsey’s project as the Center for Great Plains Studies’ 2025–26 Student Storyteller in Residence. Kelsey is a teacher, artist, researcher, and PhD candidate in Educational Studies (Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education) at UNL. She focuses on developing curricula and pedagogies for technology/media studies, cultural theory, and somatic practices in education.
The Student Storyteller in Residence Program is funded by the Michael Farrell Fund for Student Storytelling, administered through the University of Nebraska Foundation.
More about the Student Storyteller
LOWER-LEVEL GALLERY
With a Little Help from Our Friends: New Perspectives on the Collection
March 6–August 8, 2026
Organized in honor of the Center for Great Plains Studies’ 50th anniversary in 2026, this exhibition highlights the important interdisciplinary focus of the Center and its core intellectual community, the Great Plains Fellows. The Fellows as a group are scholars and community members who are concerned with the past, present, and future of the Great Plains, and they support the Center and its mission in myriad ways.
For this exhibition, 20 Fellows representing diverse disciplines and all four University of Nebraska campuses were invited to select an artwork from the Great Plains Art Museum’s permanent collection and respond to it in any way they chose, whether that’s examining the work through their scholarly lens or through their own lived experiences. This project provides a new avenue for Fellows to engage with the Center and Museum while also sharing fresh and varied perspectives on works in its collection.
Artwork: Sarah Rowe (Lakota/Ponca Tribe of Nebraska), For My Fleabitten Diamond, 2022, oil, acrylic, and ink on canvas, 48 x 72 inches, commissioned for the Elizabeth Rubendall Artist-in-Residence Collection, 2022.0004.0001. © Sarah Rowe. Used by permission.
Download the catalog
Fellows participating in With a Little Help from Our Friends
- Charles J. Bicak, Professor Emeritus, Biology, UNK
- Christina E. Dando, Peter Kiewit Professor of Geography, UNO
- Cristián Doña-Reveco, Associate Professor, Sociology & Anthropology, Director, Office of Latino/Latin American Studies, UNO
- Sheri Fritz, George Holmes University Professor, Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, School of Biological Sciences, UNL
- Thomas Gannon, Associate Professor, English & Ethnic Studies, UNL
- Angel M. Hinzo, Assistant Professor, History and Ethnic Studies, UNL
- Andrew Husa, Lecturer, School of Global Integrative Studies, UNL
- Regina Idoate, Associate Professor & Director of Spirituality, Culture and Health, Department of Health Promotion, UNMC
- Darby Kurtz, Assistant Professor; Special Collections Curator, McGoogan Health Sciences Library, UNMC
- Salvador Lindquist, Assistant Professor, Landscape Architecture, UNL
- Peter Longo, Professor, Political Science, UNK
- Louise Lynch-O’Brien, Associate Professor of Insect Biology, Entomology, UNL
- Gwendŵr Meredith, Assistant Professor, Natural Resources, UNL
- Larkin Powell, Professor, Natural Resources, UNL
- Athena Ramos, Associate Professor, College of Public Health and Central States Center for Agricultural Safety and Health, UNMC
- Todd Richardson, James R. Schumacher Chair of Ethics; Professor, Goodrich Scholarship Program, UNO
- Beth Ritter, Associate Professor, Anthropology & Native American Studies, UNO
- Liahnna Stanley, Assistant Professor of Indigeneity, Native Studies, and Communication, University of Utah (formerly Assistant Professor, Communication Studies and Ethnic Studies, UNL)
- William Stoutamire, Associate Professor, History, UNK
- Laurinda Weisse, Associate Professor; University Archivist and Digital Repository Manager, Calvin T. Ryan Library, UNK
