L. Kent Wolgamott: Art museums hope to attract audiences with planned projects

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With the expansion of the Sheldon Art Museum into the Haymarket and the development of a sculpture garden at Omaha’s Joslyn Art Museum, the landscape of art in Nebraska will undergo some dramatic changes in the next few years.

For me, the most exciting of the two is the Sheldon expansion in what is now the University of Nebraska Press warehouse, which Sheldon director Jorge Daniel Veneciano says should be up and running in about 2½ years, perhaps three years at the latest.

With 28,000 square feet of space, the Sheldon expansion will provide a venue perfect for the exhibition of contemporary art, much of which tends to be very large or is installation-based, requiring far more space than, say, a group of paintings or even a display of sculpture.

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An artist rendering for the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha shows what the museum will look like once a $10 million redevelopment project is finished. One of the more notable changes will be a reflecting pool with a granite walkway in the garden. (Courtesy illustration)

An artist rendering for the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha shows what the museum will look like once a $10 million redevelopment project is finished. One of the more notable changes will be a reflecting pool with a granite walkway in the garden. (Courtesy illustration)

“It is a good-sized space,” Veneciano said. “The second floor will be a big, wide-open space for exhibiting artwork.”

The new space also will be set up to exhibit new media, including video and computer-generated work. Built in the early ’60s, before video was even a possibility, much less realized, it’s a challenge to show new media in Sheldon.

To show “Agency of Time,” Leighton Pierce’s video installation that opened Tuesday, a gallery had to be painted black on all four walls and the ceiling, leaving only the white travertine marble floors. Previous Sheldon video presentations required construction of false walls and covering the glass doors to galleries in order to keep outside light out.

That won’t be necessary in the Haymarket building, which will have spaces designed for video, along with all the wiring needed to make that process as efficient as possible.

“We’re going to put wiring into the floor to make sure we’re ready for the future,” Veneciano said.

Precise plans for the expansion aren’t yet finished. Nor would Veneciano be pinned down to say that the Haymarket building will be a contemporary art venue only.

But it is clear that art of our time will be the major focus for the expansion, making Sheldon an instant regional contemporary art center — there’s no such space near here — and providing the opportunity for it to be nationally known for more than the collection of 20th-century American art and the Philip Johnson-designed building.

If you’ve been to Joslyn anytime since March, you know that construction of the sculpture garden is under way.

Named the Peter Kiewit Foundation Sculpture Garden last month, it is the focal point of a $10 million redevelopment that is changing the nature of the Joslyn grounds.

The sculpture garden will cover the area east of the museum building, right up to the property line that separates Joslyn  from Central High School.

It will be divided into four outdoor “galleries.” The northern-most gallery will be divided into smaller, intimate spaces, while the southern-most area will feature three distinct spaces, including open spaces for large outdoor events and concerts.

Two water features — a reflecting pool with granite walkway and an 83-foot-long, 7-foot-tall flowing water wall — will highlight the garden.

Once construction is complete, then comes the hard part — acquiring and placing the sculpture.

Joslyn will undoubtedly have an active acquisitions policy. The art museum already has some outdoor sculpture, including an untitled piece by John Henry, Kenneth Snelson’s “Able Charlie” and “Yellow Ascending” by George Sugarman that will be placed in the Discovery Garden, a children’s area.

But Joslyn will be hard pressed to match the Sheldon sculpture garden, which has more than 30 outdoor pieces, including several iconic works such as David Smith’s “Superstructure on 4,” Tony Smith’s “Willy,” Richard Serra’s “Greenpoint” (one of the first pieces in his “Torqued Elipses” series), Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen’s “Torn Notebook” and, most recently, Roxy Paine’s “Breach,” one of seven life-sized stainless steel trees he  made.

Veneciano said he hopes to add another major piece to the sculpture garden — in the Haymarket, outside near the warehouse.

That would provide yet another connection between the expansion and the campus and is part of what I see as the most exciting possibility for art in Lincoln since the opening of Sheldon.

Reach L. Kent Wolgamott at 473-7244 or kwolgamott@journalstar.com.