Exhibit to feature abandoned farm buildings

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By The Lincoln Journal Star

Nancy Warner grew up in Omaha and spent much of her youth on the farms of aunts and uncles near West Point.

When revisiting the family homestead in 2001, long-unused parts of the house, now decaying, struck Warner, now a San Francisco-based photographer, as rich with photographic possibilities. That’s how a long-term photographic study of vacant and abandoned farm buildings in Nebraska and Iowa began.

The Great Plains Art Museum at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln will present “Going Back: Midwestern Farm Places,” Warner’s exhibition of gelatin silver prints and color prints, March 12 through April 27.

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"Old Moeller Place, No. 10" will be among the prints displayed March 12 through April 27 when the Great Plains Art Museum presents "Going Back: Midwestern Farm Places" by Nancy Warner, a Nebraska native who is now a San Francisco-based photographer. (Nancy Warner)

"Old Moeller Place, No. 10" will be among the prints displayed March 12 through April 27 when the Great Plains Art Museum presents "Going Back: Midwestern Farm Places" by Nancy Warner, a Nebraska native who is now a San Francisco-based photographer. (Nancy Warner)

“I’ve been attracted again and again to human arrangements that have been left to the forces of nature. I’ve found such subjects in San Francisco, Chinatown and in abundance on these farm places,” Warner said. “As this project has developed, the imagery has expanded to include doors, windows, personal objects, furniture, disintegrating wallpaper and interior walls, interior spaces, exterior walls, farm buildings and nearby cemeteries. Relatives and friends have helped me discover other places in eastern Nebraska and across the river in Iowa, and I keep adding new images every year.”

The exhibition runs in conjunction with the Center for Great Plains Studies Symposium, “Death, Murder and Mayhem: Stories of Violence and Healing on the Plains,” April 16-19, which will include Warner as a presenter.

“These images are rich with evidence of past lives exhibited by beautiful decay,” said Amber Mohr, curator of the Great Plains Art Museum. “Whether physical death or some other passing led to their abandonment, each site Warner selects is given a worthy tribute.”

A First Friday reception for the exhibit is 5-7 p.m. April 4.

The Great Plains Art Museum, 1155 Q St., Hewit Place, is open to the public 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and 1:30-5 p.m. Sundays (closed Mondays, holiday weekends and between exhibitions). There is no admission charge. For more information, call (402) 472-6220, e-mail gpac2@unl.edu or visit www.unl.edu/plains/gallery/gallery.html.