OMAHA, NEB.- Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts is presenting From the Great Lakes to the Great Plains: The Visible Currents of Climate Change, an immersive multimedia group exhibition on view from June 13 through September 14, 2025. Curated by Rachel Adams, Chief Curator and Director of Programs, the exhibition brings together 21 artists and an artist collective to examine the environmental, cultural, and political implications of water in two vital North American regions.

While often marginalized as “flyover country,” the Great Lakes and Great Plains are indispensable landscapes where climate change is acutely visible. Participating artists — who have lived or worked in these regions — grapple with water as both life-giving and contested, revealing its roles in systems of resilience, exploitation, and transformation. Works span media and perspectives, with artists drawing from disciplines including ecology, activism, technology, history, and documentary practices.

Artists featured in this exhibition include Teresa Baker, Jess Benjamin, Nadia Botello, Andrea Carlson + Rozalinda Borcila, Hoesy Corona, Timothy Frerichs, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Dana Fritz, Sky Hopinka, JeeYeun Lee, Dylan AT Miner, Trey Moody, John Pfahl, Platte Basin Timelapse, Asad Raza, Karen Reimer, Anna Scime, Bently Spang, Colleen Thurston, and Tali Weinberg. Their contributions range from film and installation to weaving, sculpture, and sound — together offering imaginative responses to the urgent global water crisis.

Among the highlights are monumental clay sculptures by Jess Benjamin, evoking the Hoover Dam intake towers and reflecting on infrastructure’s long-term environmental toll; a new commission by Tali Weinberg that translates 130 years of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) temperature data from four U.S. river basins into woven textile panels; and Bently Spang’s immersive War Shirt #6 – Waterways, a powerful reinterpretation of the Plains Indian war shirt composed of 26 video monitors capturing the sights and sounds of water across Indigenous homelands.

“This exhibition presents water as a material, a metaphor, and a matter of survival,” said Adams. “The works engage with land usage and climate justice in deeply local and deeply global ways. From the Ogallala Aquifer and the Missouri River spanning eastward to Lake Erie, the artists ask us to reconsider how we relate to one another and to the ecosystems that surround us.”

From the Great Lakes to the Great Plains: The Visible Currents of Climate Change is generously supported, in part, by Back to the River Inc, Douglas County Visitor Improvement Fund, the Claire M. Hubbard Foundation, and Nebraska Arts Council/Nebraska Cultural Endowment.