Video By WHITNEE ICE
By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
A special art exhibit, depicting a rural life now long behind us, remains on display at the Albrecht Kemper Museum of Art through the end of next week.
Albrecht Kemper is hosting the first public exhibition of “Agrarian Spirit in the Homestead Era,” 60 art pieces depicting life from the 1850s to the 1940s, collected by Mark and Carol Moseman of David City, Nebraska.
Mark Moseman says the couple collected the paintings, drawings, and sculptures throughout the couple’s married life, getting serious about it around 10 years ago.
“So there were all these agrarian artists,” Moseman tells St. Joseph Post. “No one had put all these agrarian artists together in one exhibit or one collection before and no one had done it over this 85-year period.”
The art depicts life in rural America just prior to the Civil War to just after the end of World War II.
The collection features major European and North American artists, including Jean-Francois Millet, Diego Rivera, John Steuart Curry, Winslow Homer, and Harvey Dunn.
The art depicts the Homestead Era which drew many Europeans to the Midwest in search of the American dream.
“And they built farms and they built communities, and they built families and then something happened to them and that should not be forgotten,” Moseman says. “That culture is in us now. That’s part of who we are. That’s what we need to remember.”
Time is running out to see the exhibition.
“Agrarian Spirit in the Homestead Era: Artwork from the Moseman Collection of Agrarian Art” ends June 6th. Afterward, it moves to the Great Plains Art Museum at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln.
