FEE: Free

Wiwahokichiyapi: They Promised Things to Each Other

April 25, 2026 – February 7, 2027 | Plains Art Museum, Fargo, ND

Treaties are living documents that continue to serve as legally binding agreements shaping the political relationship between Native Nations and the United States government. These agreements established land boundaries, resource rights, and reservations; they determine Tribal Nation citizenship and outline mutual obligations. The influence of treaties, and the policies surrounding them, has had a profound impact on traditional and contemporary Indigenous life, art, and ways of making and knowing.

By pairing treaties with historical and contemporary images and art objects, this exhibition explores how treaties continue to impact Native people and reverberate through Native creativity and expression.

Wiwahokichiyapi: They Promised Things to Each Other provides an overview of treaties in the United States, with a focus on those connected to our region. The exhibition was developed in collaboration with the National Museum of the American Indian and the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service. Plains Art Museum partnered with Lakȟóta Archeologist Tyrel Iron Eyes and the Giiwedinong Treaty Rights & Culture Museum team, including Logan Monroe, Don Wedll, and Winona LaDuke, whose research and expertise helped shape the exhibition. Students from Concordia College’s Digital Design class also contributed to the exhibition panel design.

This exhibition, and all exhibitions at Plains Art Museum, are free and open to the public.

FEE: Free

Threads of Offering | Thương Hoài Trần

June 27, 2026 – January 24, 2027 | The Ruth and Seymour Landfield Atrium & Xcel Energy Gallery at Plains Art Museum, Fargo, ND

Threads of Offering presents the work of interdisciplinary Vietnamese American artist Thương Hoài Trần, whose creative practice explores identity, family history, displacement, memory, and diasporic connection through processes of weaving and unweaving.

Bringing together two major bodies of work — Ông Bà and Made in Vietnam — the exhibition examines the emotional and cultural complexities of immigration, generational disconnect, and labor. In Ông Bà, Vietnamese for “grandparents,” Hoài Trần creates monumental woven portraits honoring their family members. Each strand of yarn is hand dyed before being woven into large-scale portraits and partially unraveled, symbolizing fragmented memories, unspoken histories, and complicated familial relationships. Standing between seven and eight feet tall, the works evoke the presence of ancestors towering over viewers in the Ruth and Seymour Landfield Atrium.

Displayed in the Xcel Energy Gallery, Made in Vietnam features garments labeled “Made in Vietnam” that the artist collected, altered, and investigated through various material interventions. One featured work documents Hoài Trần painstakingly disassembling garments thread by thread over more than 24 hours, condensed into a one-minute video critiquing the hidden labor and exploitation embedded within fast fashion production. The work also functions as a self-portrait reflecting on diasporic identity and cultural inheritance.

Born in Tây Ninh, Vietnam and raised in Emporia, Kansas, Thương Hoài Trần holds degrees from Emporia State University and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Their work has been exhibited nationally at institutions including the Westmoreland Museum of American Art, The Center for Craft, and the Studios at MASS MoCA.

Gallery admission is free every day of the week.

Generous support is provided by Art Bridges Foundation’s Access for All program; the North Dakota Council on the Arts; the Arts Partnership; the McKnight Foundation; The FUNd at Plains Art Museum; Giving Hearts Day donors; Spring Gala sponsors; and Plains Art Museum members.

FEE: Museum Admission

Americana: Objects that Reflect Us

July 4, 2026–January 3, 2027

Explore 250 years of American history through the stories told by everyday objects in Americana: Objects that Reflect Us. This exhibition examines how Americans have understood their nation, communities, and identities through themes of democracy, conflict, opportunity, belonging, and culture.

Featuring artifacts that reflect the evolving American experience, the exhibition invites visitors to consider how ordinary people have helped shape the nation's history and culture over the past two and a half centuries.

This exhibition was made possible through a donation from Stenerson Lumber of Moorhead and the generous support of museum members.

Location:
Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County
Hjemkomst Center
202 1st Avenue North
Moorhead, MN 56560

FEE: Free

Clear as Mud | Annie Lee-Zimerle and Brian Zimerle

August 1 – November 29, 2026 | Starion Bank Gallery at Plains Art Museum, Fargo, ND

Clear as Mud brings together the work of Annie Lee-Zimerle and Brian Zimerle, two artists whose practices explore memory, materiality, and the quiet complexities of everyday life while reconsidering the promises and contradictions of the American Dream.

Drawing from backgrounds in printmaking, book arts, painting, drawing, and ceramics, the artists create works that reflect on domesticity, cultural mundanity, memory, and transformation. Annie Lee-Zimerle’s narrative-driven pieces examine her experiences growing up between South Korea and the American Midwest, while Brian Zimerle’s sculptural ceramics investigate the fragility of meaning through replicated objects shaped by history and material change. Together, their work invites viewers to consider what is preserved, altered, or lost over time, offering a layered meditation on belonging, cultural inheritance, and collective identity.

Annie Lee-Zimerle received her BFA and MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and is held in numerous public and private collections. Brian Zimerle holds an MFA in Ceramics from Cranbrook Academy of Art and has exhibited nationally while collaborating with archaeologists and institutions on historically informed ceramic recreations.

Gallery admission is free every day of the week.

Generous support is provided by Art Bridges Foundation’s Access for All program; the North Dakota Council on the Arts; the Arts Partnership; the McKnight Foundation; The FUNd at Plains Art Museum; Giving Hearts Day donors; Spring Gala sponsors; and Plains Art Museum members.

FEE: Free

Jenny Junker: Somewhere Between Then and Whatever

Exhibition Dates: August 14–September 27, 2026

The Rourke Art Gallery + Museum presents Somewhere Between Then and Whatever, a solo exhibition by Fargo–Moorhead printmaker Jenny Junker in the Katherine Kilbourne Burgum and Gustavian Galleries.

Originally from Mandan, North Dakota, Junker creates hand-pulled screen prints under the name Yellow Chair Press. Each layer of her prints is hand-drawn and printed in small editions, drawing inspiration from everyday observations, memories, humor, and nostalgia.

In Somewhere Between Then and Whatever, Junker explores the space between memory and imagination through whimsical, thought-provoking imagery. The exhibition invites viewers to bring their own experiences and interpretations to the work while celebrating the joy of creativity, play, and making art for its own sake.

Public Opening Reception:
Sunday, August 16, 2026 | 1:30–3:30 PM
Artist Gallery Talk: 2:00 PM

Location:
The Rourke Art Gallery + Museum
521 Main Avenue
Moorhead, MN

FEE: $10 | youth ages 16 and under are free

Metro Quilt Expo

September 25–26, 2026
Veterans Memorial Arena | West Fargo, ND

The Fargo Moorhead Quilters invite quilt lovers and admirers to the biennial Metro Quilt Expo! Spend the weekend surrounded by quilts, see award-winning work, vote for your favorites, enjoy demonstrations, shop a variety of quilting vendors, and explore special exhibits, raffles, and a silent auction.

Friday, September 25: 9:00 AM–6:00 PM
Saturday, September 26: 9:00 AM–4:00 PM
Admission: $10; youth ages 16 and under are free
Location: Veterans Memorial Arena, 1201 7th Ave E, West Fargo, ND
Phone: (701) 429-4716

FEE: Free

Come, Go Back, Child | Aaron S. Coleman

September 26, 2026–May 30, 2027

Plains Art Museum presents Come, Go Back, Child, a solo exhibition of recent work by multi-media artist Aaron S. Coleman featuring densely layered prints, sculptural assemblages, and mixed-media installations.

Coleman’s work examines the intertwined histories of race, religion, and power in the United States, combining found imagery, historical references, pop culture graphics, and religious iconography to explore contemporary Black experiences and confront systems of white supremacy.

For this exhibition, Coleman also created new works responding to objects in the Plains Art Museum Permanent Collection, including racist caricatures, blackface imagery, and a photograph of a Ku Klux Klan figure. By altering and recontextualizing imagery and materials connected to the past, the exhibition asks viewers to grapple with the continuing legacies of racism and historical injustice.

The exhibition title draws from Dr. Saidiya Hartman’s Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route and its exploration of slavery, ancestral loss, memory, and the challenge of confronting histories that have been erased or left unresolved.

Exhibition: September 26, 2026–May 30, 2027
Opening Reception: Saturday, September 26 | 6:00–8:00 PM
Location: William and Anna Jane Schlossman Gallery, Plains Art Museum | Fargo, ND
Admission: Free

The opening reception includes light refreshments, an opportunity to meet Coleman, and a chance to explore what Plains Art Museum describes as the largest exhibition of the artist’s print work to date.

FEE: See ticketing information

Frankenstein by Nick Dear

October 9–November 1, 2026
Fridays & Saturdays at 7:30 PM | Sundays at 2:00 PM

Directed by Matthew Dryburgh, Nick Dear’s Frankenstein brings Mary Shelley’s iconic story to the stage from the perspective of the Creature.

Childlike in his innocence but grotesque in form, Frankenstein’s bewildered Creature is cast out into a hostile world by his horror-struck maker. Met with cruelty wherever he goes, the increasingly desperate and vengeful Creature sets out to find his creator and strike a terrifying deal.

Performance Schedule:
Fridays & Saturdays at 7:30 PM
Sundays at 2:00 PM
October 9–November 1, 2026

Location:
Theatre B
215 10th St N,
Moorhead, MN 56560

ASL Performance & Sunday Salon: TBD

FEE: $20

The Open Road: Music for Choir and Guitar

Saturday, October 17, 2026 | 4:00–5:30 PM
Sunday, October 18, 2026 | 2:00–3:30 PM

Join the Fargo-Moorhead Choral Artists and classical guitarist Curtis Thompson for The Open Road: Music for Choir and Guitar, a fall program exploring America’s story through music shaped by war, migration, belonging, sacrifice, and hope.

The program features Jeffrey Van’s A Procession Winding Around Me, setting Walt Whitman’s Civil War poetry for choir and guitar, and Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Romancero Gitano, based on poetry by Federico García Lorca. Together, these works invite audiences to reflect on experiences of conflict, immigration, identity, and cultural memory.

The concerts will conclude with beloved American folk songs arranged by René Clausen, Stephen Paulus, and Shawn Kirchner.

This program is generously supported by a grant from the Lake Region Arts Council.

Performances:
Saturday, October 17 | 4:00–5:30 PM
Sunday, October 18 | 2:00–3:30 PM

Location:
Trinity Lutheran Church
213 8th St S
Moorhead, MN 56560

FEE: See ticketing information

I Never Asked for a GoFundMe by Jayne Deely

November 27–December 20, 2026
Fridays & Saturdays at 7:30 PM | Sundays at 2:00 PM

Directed by Charlie Williamson, I Never Asked for a GoFundMe is a sharp contemporary comedy about identity, assumptions, small-town gossip, and the unexpected consequences of good intentions.

Millie and her partner Avery have returned to Millie’s hometown of Mobile, Alabama, while Avery recovers from gender-affirming top surgery. Things quickly spiral out of control when a nosy evangelical family friend mistakes Avery’s surgery for a battle with breast cancer and starts a GoFundMe for the couple.

Suddenly flooded with donations they never asked for—and at the center of small-town gossip—Millie and Avery must decide what to do with the money and whether being unapologetically themselves comes with a price tag.

Performance Schedule:
Fridays & Saturdays at 7:30 PM
Sundays at 2:00 PM
November 27–December 20, 2026

Location:
Theatre B
215 10th St N,
Moorhead, MN 56560

ASL Performance & Sunday Salon: TBD

FEE: $20

When Angels Sing

Saturday, January 16, 2027 | 4:00–5:30 PM
Sunday, January 17, 2027 | 2:00–3:30 PM

Join the Fargo-Moorhead Choral Artists for When Angels Sing, a mid-winter concert exploring themes of angels, heaven, remembrance, and the enduring connections that bind us across generations.

Featuring music by John Tavener, William Byrd, Moses Hogan, William Dawson, Bernice Johnson Reagon, and others, the program brings together a rich variety of musical traditions reflecting wonder, hope, and joy.

From luminous sacred masterpieces and thrilling spirituals to heartfelt songs of remembrance and celebration, When Angels Sing offers an inspiring program exploring the many ways music helps us connect with one another and the eternal.

Performances:
Saturday, January 16 | 4:00–5:30 PM
Sunday, January 17 | 2:00–3:30 PM

Location:
Trinity Lutheran Church
213 8th St S
Moorhead, MN 56560

FEE: See ticketing information

The Gravediggers Union by Brian James Polak

February 19–March 14, 2027
Fridays & Saturdays at 7:30 PM | Sundays at 2:00 PM

Directed by Scott Ecker, The Gravediggers Union is a play about found family, longing, and the desire to go somewhere you can never quite find.

At a cemetery in fictional Ashworth, New Hampshire, a group of coworkers dig holes, pass the time, and navigate a tangled web of relationships and ambitions. Some dream of being somewhere else, while others are perfectly happy being miserable right where they are.

When a corporate cemetery opens across the street and threatens their jobs, the group comes up with an unconventional plan: stage a production of Three Sisters to raise enough money to buy the cemetery themselves. There’s just one problem—nobody goes to plays anymore.

Performance Schedule:
Fridays & Saturdays at 7:30 PM
Sundays at 2:00 PM
February 19–March 14, 2027

Location:
Theatre B
215 10th St N,
Moorhead, MN 56560

ASL Performance & Sunday Salon: TBD

FEE: See ticketing information

Pivot by Alex Lubischer

April 30–May 23, 2027
Fridays & Saturdays at 7:30 PM | Sundays at 2:00 PM

Directed by Pam Strait, Pivot is a play about tradition, change, family expectations, and fighting for the future you thought was already mapped out.

Kara knows exactly what she wants: a giant wedding reception, a father-daughter dance to the Dixie Chicks, and a solid three-year crop rotation plan for the farm. But when her wedding plans blow up in her face, she’s prepared to upend the entire town of Milton, Nebraska, to fight for the future that should have been hers.

A story about what happens when carefully laid plans collide with change—and about the things you should never, ever say to your in-laws.

Performance Schedule:
Fridays & Saturdays at 7:30 PM
Sundays at 2:00 PM
April 30–May 23, 2027

Location:
Theatre B
215 10th St N,
Moorhead, MN 56560

ASL Performance & Sunday Salon: TBD