The 2023 Spring Conference in Red Cloud will be a celebration of 150 years of Willa Cather’s life and work. As part of that celebration, we will recognize the 100th publication anniversary of one of her greatest novels: A Lost Lady. In conjunction, we will host an invitational exhibit,Visions Seen in the Air, which will feature the work of well-known national and regional artists and be on exhibit in our Red Cloud Opera House gallery from May 16 to July 15, 2023. An artists’ reception will be held during our Spring Conference, June 2, 2023, at 4:30 p.m.

Our conference theme, “Complex and Brilliant: Cather at 150,” will focus on Cather’s writing and enduring legacy as one of the most important writers of the twentieth century. As we read A Lost Lady, Cather’s artistry and her memory are on full display as she so poignantly creates a world that is both Red Cloud and the fictional Sweet Water. Coupled with Cather’s evocative nonfiction piece, “Nebraska: The End of the First Cycle,” readers see the many ways that Cather’s home town of Red Cloud, Nebraska, has continued to occupy a major place in American literature.

“This was the very end of the road-making West; the men who had put plains and mountains under the iron harness were old; some were poor, and even the successful ones were hunting for rest and a brief reprieve from death. It was already gone, that age; nothing could ever bring it back. The taste and smell and song of it, the visions those men had seen in the air and followed,—these he had caught in a kind of afterglow in their own faces,—and this would always be his.” ~ Willa Cather, A Lost Lady

The exhibit’s title, Visions Seen in the Air, asks contributing artists to contemplate the essence of Willa Cather’s home town and to convey, through any medium, that sense of place and feeling of home that would later inspire Cather as she created her six Nebraska novels. Exhibiting artists include: Shane Booth, Susan Hart, Roberta Barnes, Michael Burton, Jude Martindale, Betty Kort, Gregory Summers, Karen Vierneisel, Desirae Hajny, Mark Moseman, Beth Cole, Deb Kubik, Richard Schilling, Sammy Lynn, Allan Tubach, Karen Dienstbier, Katie Weiss, Marcia Bauerle, Jo Brown, Travis Hencey, Ben Darling, Sarah Rowe, Margaret Krug, Cassia Kite, Mary Vaughan, Bob Culver, and Stephanie Frostad.

Many of these pieces will be for sale, so please browse our gallery in person or view the online gallery, which will launch on May 17. Proceeds from gallery sales support our mission to preserve Willa Cather's legacy through education, preservation, and the arts.

Gallery exhibitions are made possible through the support of the Nebraska Arts Council and Nebraska Cultural Endowment.