By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
An art exhibition at the Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art captures the spirit of farming and hard work; an outgrowth of the Homestead Act.
Albrecht-Kemper Executive Director Eric Fuson says the exhibition entitled “Agrarian Spirit in the Homestead Era: Artwork from the Moseman Collection of Agrarian Art,” is the first public display of the collection of Mark and Carol Moseman of Nebraska. It will feature about 60 pieces of paintings, drawings, and sculptures.
“It all is about kind of that beginning when the homesteaders came out on the Great Plains, set up those farms, and then what that work really meant to them,” Fuson tells host Barry Birr on the KFEQ Hotline.
Albrecht-Kemper Marketing Manager Jill Carlson says it celebrates a time in America when individuals had little other than the work they could produce with their own hands.
“A lot of people who are farmers these days, they know, they know that perseverance and the resilience that it takes to work the land and to depend on, you give to the land and the land gives back to you,” Carlson says.
The Moseman collection captures the era from the 1850s to the 1940s.
Carlson says the exhibition celebrates how communities came together when nobody had much except for the ability to hard work to get a piece of land to call their own.
“The farmers these days don’t do it alone,” Carlson says. “It’s because of the community. It’s because every person has their shared role in society and that’s how we can move forward together.”
Fuson says the exhibition is a real eye-opener.
“It’s a great reminder of thinking back of just how far we’ve come and just how much hard work has come before us by our ancestors,” according to Fuson.
The exhibition entitled “Agrarian Spirit in the Homestead Era” is on display at the Albrecht-Kemper Art Museum through June 6th.