In Bloom
February 25–August 30, 2025
Join us in celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Kansas State University Gardens with floral imagery from the museum’s collection. This exhibition is also our annual collaboration with the Manhattan Public Library’s summer reading program. The American Library Association has chosen the theme, “Color Our World,” and we promise a riot of color!
Exhibition highlights include glass artist Dale Chihuly’s Imperial Iris Persian Pair, a gift of Ross and Marianna Beach, and Cubist artist George Braque’s Les Marguerites. Numerous Midwestern artists are represented, among them John F. Helm, Jr., Avis Chitwood, Birger Sandzén and Grant Wood. Wood’s Tame Flowers in the exhibition was hand colored by his sister, Nan Wood. Contemporary artists featured include Renée Stout, Karsten Creightney and Kate Nessler. Nessler’s Lady Slipper Orchid was a Royal Horticultural Society gold medal winner.
Elementary school tours of In Bloom will focus on botany and scientific drawing. The exhibition will also provide subject matter for the museum’s summer ARTSmart programs featuring visits to The Meadow north of the museum, discussions of the importance of pollinators and a variety of colorful art projects.
The exhibition has been co-curated by Gabriella Randall as part of a museum certificate program in K-State’s anthropology department. Randall is majoring in art history and minoring in classics. Her work on the exhibition was part of a 2024 summer internship at the Beach Museum of Art which was generously funded by Tony Crawford.
Major Sponsors: Friends of the Beach Museum of Art, Greater Manhattan Community Foundation’s Lincoln & Dorothy I. Deihl Community Grants Program
Sustaining Sponsors: Dan and Beth Bird
Media Sponsor: Radio Kansas
Related event
Let’s Talk Flowers with Karsten Creightney
A Let’s Talk Art conversation
Thursday, March 6, 2025 | 5:30 PM | Livestream | Free and open to all
Click here to register and join the free program via Zoom. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email with information about how to join the program.
Field Guide to a Hybrid Landscape: Dana Fritz
2025 Friends of the Beach Museum of Art Gift Print Artist
February 4–August 2, 2025
This exhibition makes visible the forces that shaped what was once the world’s largest hand planted forest, now administered by the Nebraska National Forests and Grasslands. Black and white prints by photographer Dana Fritz reveal the patterns in sand, water, planting, and burning present in this late 19th-century experiment to create a timber industry and change the climate of a semi-arid Nebraska prairie. Fritz is Hixson-Lied Professor of Art at University of Nebraska–Lincoln.
Dana Fritz, Fire Tower View, 2021, inkjet print, 16 x 40 in., courtesy of the artist
Related Event
Trees in the Grasslands: Three Perspectives
Livestream conversation | Thursday, April 24, 2025 | 5:30 PM | Free and open to all
Click here to register and join the free program via Zoom. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email with information about how to join the program.
Join us for a conversation about tree planting campaigns on the prairie and their impacts with Dana Fritz, Hixson-Lied Professor of Art at University of Nebraska–Lincoln; Jesse Nippert, K-State University Distinguished Professor in the division of biology; and Carson Vaughan, author and freelance environmental reporter. Curator Dr. Elizabeth Seaton serves as moderator.
2025 Gift Print:
Every two years the Friends of the Beach Museum of Art commissions a limited-edition print by a recognized Kansas artist for sale to the public. Kansas State University’s Friends of Art started the gift print program in 1934. Dana Fritz’s Tallgrass Orientation is the 2025 Friends of the Beach Museum of Art Gift Print and is available for purchase at the museum. Fritz has written about the work:
Inspired by my 2023 Tallgrass artist residency in the Kansas Flint Hills, I layered compass plant leaves with a topographic map of the area where I collected them. The fingers of their giant leaves point to the poles and orient their flat faces to the east and west sun. Indigenous and settler travelers valued compass plants for orientation in a vast landscape with few large landmarks. I was struck by the resemblance between the shape of the compass plant leaves and the topographic representation of the land around Matfield Green.
For more information about becoming a Friend or purchasing this year’s gift print, please contact the museum at 785-532-7718 or email rlonborg@ksu.edu. Friends of the Beach Museum of Art receive a 25% discount.
Dana Fritz, Tallgrass Orientation, 2024, inkjet print, 16 x 20 in., courtesy of the artist
Doug Barrett is a photographer and videographer based in Manhattan, Kansas. His work demonstrates how Gordon Parks continues to inspire contemporary artists. Barrett’s projects include interviewing, photographing, and telling the stories of homeless veterans, creating a collective portrait of the Yuma Street community of Manhattan, Kansas, and documenting the Black Lives Matter movement in Kansas.
