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.

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.