Nebraska artists featured in exhibit on campus

A new exhibition featuring 15 Nebraska artists has opened in the Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center on the UNMC and Nebraska Medicine campus.

Wendy Jane Bantam, “The Pheasant and the Magnolia,” 2020

The free exhibit, offered through the med center’s Healing Arts Program, is titled “Contemporary Nebraska – Selections from Kiechel Fine Art” and runs through Jan. 7, 2022. The exhibition can be viewed on Level 1 of the Buffett Cancer Center by staff and patients.

Kiechel Fine Art, established in 1986 in Lincoln, Nebraska, specializes in 19th and 20th century American art, old master and contemporary prints, as well as regional and national contemporary art. Kiechel exhibits the top Midwestern contemporary artists, and this exhibition highlights the work of 15 Nebraska artists. The artists featured in this exhibition include Wendy Jane Bantam, Anne Burton, Michael Burton, Eddie Dominguez, Kira Nam Greene, Anthony Benton Gude, Hal Holoun, Aaron Holz, Dan Howard, Jenny Kruger, Karen Kunc, Chad M. Olsen, Ernest Ochsner, Francisco Souto and Kaiser Suidan. The collection includes paintings, woodcut prints, drawings, ceramics and mixed media collage, showing the diversity of Nebraska artists.

Anthony Benton Gude, “Above the Rainbow,” 2008

Many of these artists are inspired by nature, specifically the Nebraska landscape. While others create portraits, still lifes and studies in color to display vignettes from family life, evoke empathy, comment about identity or create playful patterns. Highlights of the exhibition include Above the Rainbow by Anthony Benton Gude, the grandson of Regionalist master Thomas Hart Benton, who innately denotes his legacy in his depictions of the Midwest, and Jenny Kruger’s hyper-realistic images of rural settings and animals placed in flat, abstract backgrounds.

“The selected works range from representational to abstract, realistic to surreal, structured to expressive,” said Colleen Heavican Cass, Healing Arts Curator. “Yet these artists are connected by their focus on color and remarkable technique. As a group, the vibrant colors and alluring compositions offer an escape to the viewer and a moment of calm.”

Learn more about these artists and Kiechel Fine Art.