Land In Alliance: Finding Common Ground for Our Shared Future

September 17 - December 27, 2026

What does it mean to belong to a place—and what can we learn from the different ways we understand and care for the land that sustains us?

That question sits at the heart of Land in Alliance: Shared Ground | Shared Future, opening September 17 at the Salina Art Center. Guest curated by Taiomah Rutledge (Ojibwe / Meskwaki / Dakota), the exhibition brings together Native and non-Native artists whose work explores our relationships to land, place, and one another.

For Indigenous peoples, these relationships have long been understood through kinship. Land is not simply property or a resource, but animate and sacred—a living relation to which people belong and hold responsibilities. Other experiences of place—through farming, conservation, science, art, family, labor, and generations spent on the same ground—bring their own knowledge and relationships. Land in Alliance creates space for these perspectives to meet, revealing both their distinctions and sometimes unexpected similarities.

The exhibition was inspired, in part, by the legacy of the Cowboy and Indian Alliance, which brought Native peoples, ranchers, farmers, and other communities together around a shared commitment to protecting land and water. Their alliance offers one example of what can happen when people bring their own histories and knowledge to a common concern and recognize the value of learning from one another.

Throughout the galleries, artists working in painting, sculpture, photography, textiles, installation, video, and social practice offer deeply personal perspectives on conservation, agriculture, Indigenous knowledge, restoration, and our relationship to the natural world. Some works celebrate the beauty and resilience of prairie landscapes. Others consider extraction, climate change, memory, belonging, and the responsibilities we hold to future generations. Together, they suggest that our understanding of land becomes richer when we encounter it through more than one experience or way of knowing.

“We are the land. When we bring our different experiences and ways of knowing together, we have an opportunity to learn from one another—and to become better stewards of the land and of each other.” — Taiomah Rutledge

The exhibition also reflects the belief that art can be a place where these relationships and ideas are explored together. Throughout the fall, Land in Alliance will be accompanied by films, artist talks, community conversations, and partnerships with artists, scientists, farmers, conservationists, Indigenous knowledge keepers, and regional organizations. These voices don't need to approach land in exactly the same way to have something meaningful to offer one another.

More than an exhibition about the environment, Land in Alliance is an invitation to consider belonging. The landscapes we call home shape us—the ways we live, what we know, the stories we carry, and how we understand our responsibilities to the future. We may come to that relationship through different traditions and experiences, but we share the rhythms of living upon the same earth: watching the sky gather before a storm, preparing for winter, recognizing the seasons of planting and harvest, and depending upon the land and water that sustain life.

Perhaps our shared future begins there—not by asking everyone to see the land in the same way, but by recognizing how much we can learn from one another about caring for a place to which we all belong.

Project Initiative & Participating Institutions

This project is part of the initiative Home Is Where We Are: Art of First Americans, spanning institutions across the Great Plains and putting a coordinated focus on contemporary Indigenous art. Each participating organization presents a distinct project that contributes to a broader collective effort amplifying Indigenous perspectives. Participating institutions in Kansas include the Chapman Center for Rural Studies, Kansas Studies Institute, Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art, Mid-America All-Indian Museum, Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Salina Art Center, Ulrich Museum of Art, and Volland, A Place for Art and Community—together positioning the region as a destination for experiencing the art of First Americans.

Kansas Studies Institute and Chapman Center for Rural Studies

Project Title: Kansas Land Treaties

Dates: ongoing

Link to exhibition info: https://kansastreaties.com/

Exhibition Description: Though most Kansans don’t realize it, Kansas is Kanza homeland. The Kansas Treaties Project is a digital resource that helps educators, students, and the public learn more about the state’s namesake: the Kanza people (today’s federally recognized Kaw Nation). The project provides annotations for treaties and acts of Congress that impacted the Kanza, along with oral histories, interactive maps, and numerous short films about Kansas history and life. This project is a collaboration between Kaw Nation citizens, Kansas State University scholars and the Chapman Center for Rural Studies, as well as Johnson County Community College’s Kansas Studies Institute.

Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art

Exhibition Title: Home/Land: Wahzhazhe Artists Speak

Dates: August 18, 2026—July 24, 2027

Link to exhibition info: https://beach.k-state.edu/explore/exhibitions/future.html

Exhibition Description: 

Through a variety of mediums, Wahzhazhe (Osage) artists Norman Akers, Anita Fields, and Ryan RedCorn consider the significance of land, language, and culture in ideas about “home.” The ancestral homelands of the Wahzhazhe encompassed lands that are now part of Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. In the nineteenth century, U.S. government policies forced the Osage from much of that land and onto a reservation in present-day Oklahoma. In the generations that followed, the Osage Nation continued to defend its sovereignty and cultural identity. Sharing their stories, these contemporary artists invite others to consider how history and landscape shape their own notions of home, land, and belonging.

Mid-America All-Indian Museum and Ulrich Museum of Art

Exhibition Title: Confluence: Spirit Keepers and Indigenous Futures

Dates: January 2027

Link to exhibition info: https://www.theindianmuseum.org/Pages/Exhibits.aspx#Upcoming

Short Description: 

Confluence: Spirit Keepers and Indigenous Futures is a collaborative exhibition between the Ulrich Museum of Art and the Mid-America All-Indian Museum (MAAIM), featuring approximately 40 works drawn from both collections. Taking its name from the MAAIM's location at the confluence of the Arkansas and Little Arkansas Rivers, the exhibition brings together works by contemporary Native American artists alongside 19th- and 20th-century works, including pieces by Blackbear Bosin (Kiowa/Comanche, 1921–1980), creator of Wichita's iconic Keeper of the Plains, to illuminate Indigenous culture as both timeless and evolving. Together, these works celebrate the contributions of Native American peoples to the broader cultural ecosystem, offering a lens through which to understand the intersections of cultural heritage, contemporary experience, and Indigenous futures.

Exhibition Description: 

Confluence: Spirit Keepers and Indigenous Futures is a collaborative exhibition between the Ulrich Museum of Art and the Mid-America All-Indian Museum (MAAIM), who both share a longstanding commitment to fostering a deeper understanding of American art and culture. This collaboration will allow both institutions to leverage their expertise, resources, and collections to create an exhibition that is intellectually rigorous, culturally significant, and highly engaging for diverse audiences. Confluence will feature approximately 40 works from both museums collections.

Titled for the location of the exhibition, the MAAIM, situated at the confluence of the Arkansas and the Little Arkansas River, the idea of convergence also aptly refers to the transhistorical curation of the exhibition in combining works by contemporary Native American artists with works created in the 19th and 20th centuries, including works by Blackbear Bosin (Kiowa/Comanche, 1921-1980), creator of Wichita’s Keeper of the Plains.

The exhibition's conceptual framework rests on the understanding that Native American art is not a monolith but a diverse field that intersects with multiple realities. Contemporary artists, who incorporate both traditional materials and innovative forms, will serve as a bridge between the past and the present, inviting viewers to see Indigenous culture as both timeless and evolving. Together, these works will offer a lens through which to understand the intersection of cultural heritage, contemporary issues, and the visions for the future. Confluence will celebrate the deep and enduring contributions of Native American populations to the larger cultural ecosystem.

Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art

Exhibition Title: Norman Akers Navigates the Space Between

Dates: June 12–December 6, 2026

Link to exhibition info: https://www.nermanmuseum.org/exhibitions/2026-06-12-norman-akers.html 

Exhibition Description (short version, pre-approved by the author):

In these new works, Norman Akers (b. 1958; citizen of Osage Nation) fills his canvases with a web of cartographic iconography drawn from road maps, Osage philosophy, and his own visual vernacular. Using the Osage visual mnemonic of the elk, who serves as the herald seeking to get our attention to the ecological crises we are creating, Akers has constructed a series of images that serve as a call to arms.

Akers uses map elements to help us find familiar places while also laying claim to Osage homelands and sites within this spatial web. The elk moves through the spaces, navigating the space between the before and since of tribal removals, to the edge of the future upon which we teeter for balance. He allows the elk to fall, to crash, and for the empty currents of rivers to be transformed into electrical wires or razor wire, creating a trap from which the elk cannot escape without our intervention. The elk is the witness to this desecration. We are the transgressors being watched.

In this suite of six paintings, Akers wields the elk and the turtle as metaphors for the pristine state of nature, both depicted in distress. We are asked to consider our own role within the creation of the apocalypse. Each of us is caught in the same web of being, between the past and the future. There is no absolute end to this journey, only the recognition that we are on the journey together, sharing the only life raft with the earth itself.

—heather ahtone, Director, Curatorial Affairs, First Americans Museum, Oklahoma City, OK

Three Questions to Carry With You

As you experience Land in Alliance, we invite you to consider:

How do we belong to the land?

How has the landscape you call home shaped your memories, traditions, knowledge, and understanding of your place within it?

What does it mean to be a good steward?

What can different traditions and ways of knowing teach us about caring for the land, one another, and the generations who will come after us?

What can we learn from one another?

What becomes possible when artists, Indigenous knowledge keepers, farmers, scientists, conservationists, and communities bring their experiences together—not to make them the same, but to deepen our collective understanding of the places we share?

We hope you'll join us this fall to experience Land in Alliance: Shared Ground | Shared Future and consider your own relationship to the land that holds and sustains us.

PROGRAMMING

LAND IN ALLIANCE OPENING RECEPTION | September 18, 5–7 PM | Salina Art Center

Celebrate the opening of Land in Alliance: Shared Ground | Shared Future with food by Native chef Jason Champagne (Chippewa) and an opportunity to meet exhibiting artists. At 6 PM, guest curator Taiomah Rutledge (Ojibwe/Meskwaki/Dakota) will facilitate an artist panel exploring the exhibition’s themes of unlikely alliances, shared stewardship, and collective futures.

Free and open to the public.

THROWBACK THURSDAY: THE DEFIANT ONES (1958)
September 17 | 6:30 PM | Art Center Cinema

Two escaped prisoners—one Black, one white—are chained together and forced to depend on each other to survive. The Defiant Ones launches our Land in Alliance programming with a powerful story of an unlikely alliance forged across deep divisions, asking what becomes possible when necessity gives way to shared purpose.

SECOND SATURDAY | October 10 & December 12 | 11 am - 1 pm | Salina Art Center

Make art together! Join us at Salina Art Center for free, all-ages artmaking led by an exhibiting artist. Each Second Saturday features a hands-on creative experience inspired by the ideas and artwork in Land in Alliance: Shared Ground | Shared Future. No experience necessary—just come ready to create!

ANTHROPOMORPHIC POETRY NIGHT | Wednesday, October 14 | 7–8 PM | Salina Art Center

Join Mercedes Santiago and guests for an evening of live poetry, performance, and creative expression inspired by Land in Alliance. Experience original readings that explore our connections to one another, the land, and the more-than-human world.

Free and open to the public.

ROAD TRIP: Prairie, Paint & Bison

Thursday, November 12 | 9 AM–5 PM

Hit the road with the Salina Art Center for a day of art, prairie, and a few surprises! Experience the wide-open beauty and roaming bison of Maxwell Wildlife Refuge, then go behind the scenes of the remarkable McPherson Public Schools Art Collection—an unexpected treasure of original artwork collected for generations. Enjoy lunch together before an unforgettable studio visit with surprise artists, offering an up-close look at their work, creative spaces, and stories.

Transportation, lunch, admission, and all experiences are included. Come ready to explore—you never know what we’ll discover along the way!

$75 per person. Space is limited.