Broadsheet Resources (Issue 4)

Read, watch, & listen with Art of the Rural

Jul 02, 2025

Check out these exhibitions, articles, books, and more from throughout the field of rural arts & culture, curated by Art of the Rural staff. Find our previous Resources editions here.

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Exhibitions

Appearances Deceive: Embroideries by Policarpio Valenci

Museum of International Folk Art, Santa Fe, NM

This groundbreaking retrospective of the work of Nuevomexicano artist Policarpio Valencia (1853-1931) offers a rare and intimate look at the life and artistic contributions of Valencia, whose embroidered textiles examine themes of morality, mortality, and spirituality with a distinctive blend of humor and depth. On view June 8, 2025 - July 27, 2026

Cannupa Hanska Luger, Surviva: a future ancestral field guide

Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, Washington, DC

Acclaimed multimedia artist Cannupa Hanska Luger has been weaving together strands of a new myth, compiled in a soon-to-be-released part graphic novel, part art book. Collectively referred to as Future Ancestral Technologies, this sprawling series of interrelated works seeks to reimagine Indigenous life and culture in a postcolonial world where space exploration has reduced and reconfigured the earth’s population. The exhibition features two large-scale silkscreen banners—painted live during the opening on July 1—and a sculptural installation built from the survival manual that inspired the book. SURVIVA unfolds as both a narrative and a living ecosystem, rooted in Indigenous futures, collective care, and earth-based knowledge. On view July 1 - September 7, 2025

Enduring Forces

Castell Hill Country Gallery and Museum, Castell, TX

From our subscribers! The show gathers artists, land stewards, photographers, designers and architects to reflect on the harsh natural rhythms of the region—drought and deluge, wildflower bloom and wind-swept prairie—and how those forces shape memory, identity and place. It was organized by the La Cuna Center, an arts and ecology initiative based just up the road in Art, TX. This exhibition was on view March 29-June 21

Articles

Caroline McCoy, “‘Sinners’ Comes Home to Clarksdale”

Oxford American

On May 29, Sinners, Ryan Coogler’s hit film about vampires and blues, arrived in Clarksdale, Mississippi, the city that inspired it. After campaigning to get Ryan Coogler’s film screened in the town where it’s set, local organizers turned the spotlight on their own creative economy.

Rockie Lyons, “Dolores Huerta Opened my Eyes to How Food Comes to my Family”

Mary Swander’s Emerging Voices

A reflection on the life & legacy of Dolores Huerta, the 94-year-old farm worker activist who championed women's and farm workers' rights most of her life. In 1962, Huerta and Cesar Chavez co-founded the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee, later the United Farm Workers Union. This Union fought for justice and fair treatment of migrant farm workers in California.

Brendan Fitzgerald, “A Brilliant Folk Musician Turned the Natural Sounds of the Blue Ridge Mountains Into Powerful Songs”

Smithsonian Magazine

Daniel Bachman is on a mission to evoke Virginia’s past through strange medleys of sounds. With each new album, Bachman seems more obsessed with capturing a world that is slipping away. Where his songs once held traces of traditional styles and arrangements, they are now experimental and unruly, brimming with the sounds of the world, caught by Bachman as history unfolds in the present.

Nick Estes, “Leonard Peltier’s Story Isn’t Over Yet”

The New Yorker

Native activist Leonard Peltier spent nearly fifty years in prison for the killing of two F.B.I. agents. In January, Joe Biden commuted his sentence, and he went home to the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation, in North Dakota. In this interview, read about his experience joining the American Indian Movement and his struggle for survival and freedom in the decades since.

Books & Publications

FORWARD Issue 8: Civic Health

Ed. Richard Young (Forecast Public Art, 2025)

FORWARD highlights how artists are partnering with cities, institutions, and communities to courageously tackle the vital issues of our time. This issue focuses on civic health and engagement, particularly in the spheres of civic knowledge, relationship building, and transformation. We are deeply grateful for the inclusion of the Kentucky Rural-Urban Exchange (RUX) among these amazing creative changemakers!

Edward Burtynsky: The Great Acceleration

Curated by David Campany (International Center of Photography, 2025)

Accompanying his first solo institutional exhibition of world-renowned photographer Edward Burtynsky’s work in New York City in over twenty years, The Great Acceleration reveals the depth of Burtynsky's investigation into the human alteration of natural landscapes around the world, revealing both their present fragility and enduring beauty. This retrospective serves as both an urgent call for environmental awareness and an invitation to appreciate the sublimity that persists in the landscape, deepening our understanding of the global challenges we face today.

The Life and Poetry of Frank Stanford

James McWilliams (The University of Arkansas Press, 2025)

When twenty-nine-year-old Frank Stanford put three bullets in his chest on June 3, 1978, he ended a life that had been inextricably linked with poetry since childhood. Deeply influential but largely unknown outside his corner of the poetry world, this prodigy of the American South inspired a cult following that has kept his reputation and work flickering on the periphery of the American literary tradition ever since.

A Nation Takes Place: Navigating Race and Water in Contemporary Art

Ed. Tia-Simone Gardner and Shana M. griffin (University of Minnesota Press, 2024)

Neither the metaphorical birth of a nation nor its actual violent formation is a one-time event. It is a process. A process of erasing, naming, and unnaming. Settling and unsettling. Extracting, dispossessing, and disappearing—a process of taking and placemaking. It is a tool of conquest, unthinkable without waterways, voyages, slave ships, and hemispheric maps of colonial and imperial demarcation. A companion to the exhibition A Nation Takes Place at the Minnesota Marine Art Museum, this catalog examines how artists bring critical attention to the “liquid fantasies” of the sea and navigate race and the violent silences, voids, ruptures, breaks, and counterworld formations unattended by the visuality of traditional maritime art, pushing the boundaries of what marine art is and can become.

The New Territory Issue 17: What We’re Made Of

The New Territory

Cairns and waterways. Unnatural Nebraska forests. Dragon boat races and boxing gyms. From the ecological possibilities of sand green golf to a rematriated garden in Kansas, Issue 17 is showered with the stars, galaxies and complexities of the Midwest region.

Film & Video

Farming While Black

Dir. Mark Decena (Kontent Films, 2023)

Leah Penniman, co-founder of Soul Fire Farm, reflects on the plight of Black farmers in the United States. From the height of Black-owned farms at 14% in 1910 to less than 2% today, Leah, and other compatriots help propel a rising generation of Black farmers finding strength in the deep historical knowledge of African agrarianism — and its potential to save the planet.

“Art Off the Beaten Path: Nebraska Stories”

Nebraska Public Media (2025)

Learn about exciting art in the heart of rural Nebraska, including Art Farm, Fred’s Flying Circus, and the studio of artist Cindy Chinn.

“One small town’s closeup”

CBS Sunday Morning (Originally broadcast on May 25, 1983)

"Sunday Morning" anchor Charles Kuralt introduces us to photographer Jim Richardson, who was revisiting the town of Cuba, Kansas, population 300, most of whom have been the subject of his unerring eye.

Music & Sound

Democracy Forward, A Double Album

The Bitter Southerner

Welcome to BS Records and their very first double/compilation album with all proceeds going to Democracy Forward, a legal organization using the courts to defend progress, disrupt extremism, and fight tirelessly for our democracy. The double album features Michael Stipe (Invocation), Sierra Ferrell, Wilco, Tyler Childers, Brandi Carlile, Hurray for the Riff Raff, Allison Russell, Brittany Howard, Tunde Adebimpe, Kevin Morby and Waxahatchee, Fruit Bats, Jason Isbell and 400 Unit, She Returns from War, John Prine, S.G. Goodman, Langhorne Slim, Blue Mountain, Danielle Ponder, Jim James, Michael Stipe and Big Red Machine. Though pre-orders are currently sold out but it’ll be back again soon!

S.G. Goodman, Planting by the Signs

S.G. Goodman returns from the Western Kentucky bottomland with her latest full-length album on her very own Slough Water Records via Thirty Tigers. Composed of songs inspired by love, loss, reconciliation, and the aforementioned ancient practice. Eleven tracks highlighted by the critically-acclaimed and award-winning artist’s singular voice and her penchant for juxtaposing vulnerable folk music with punchy rock ‘n roll, replete with chiming guitars, ethereal atmospherics, and her DIY ethos. Goodman provides a timely reminder that the only way forward is together, and that we must always take into account humanity’s dependence on and responsibility to the natural world.

Wednesday, “Wound Up Here (By Holdin On)”

Can a self-portrait be a collage? Can empathy be autobiographical? What’s the point of living if we’re not trying to understand all the horror and humor that surrounds everything? These are a few of the questions lurking under the bleachers of Wednesday’s upcoming album Bleeds, an intoxicating collection of narrative-heavy Southern rock that—like many of the most arresting passages from the North Carolina band’s highlight reel so far—thoughtfully explores the vivid link between curiosity and confession.

2025 North Carolina Heritage Awards Recipients

Since 1989, the North Carolina Heritage Awards have honored artists statewide for their contributions to the cultural lives of their communities. Listen to the musicmakers in these mini documentaries featuring Chester McMillian, The Glorifying Vines Sisters, and Gaurang Doshi.

Podcast & Radio

“Beyond the Clock with Lacy Hale”

Department of Public Transformation (via Rural Remix)

In this Beyond the Clock episode, Ash Hanson from Department of Public Transformation and Anna Claussen from Voices for Rural Resilience converse with Eastern Kentucky-based artist and advocate, Lacy Hale about resilience, restoration, and reciprocity in rural places. In this conversation, they explore the role of the artist in times of disaster and division. Lacy inspires us to advocate for our rural people and places with projects like "No Hate in My Holler" and to support our communities, while still caring for ourselves.

“The Land Is Dead, Long Live the Land”

The Only Thing That Lasts

We tend to think of farmland and nature as distinct and easily distinguished, but in this episode, our host Sarah Mock poses the question: What if these boundaries are far more fuzzy than we imagine? How do the effects of intensive agriculture bleed into the surrounding environments, and how do our natural ecosystems dictate what can and can't be farmed? This may sound like a philosophical exploration, but it's also highly practical. Let Sarah explain why "farmland" — the very subject of this podcast — is an exceedingly complicated descriptor.

“Daisy Bates in Mitchellville”

Points South

Join producer Christian Leus as she travels to Mitchellville, Arkansas, a small Black town close to the Mississippi state line. Mitchellville’s story is little known even to Arkansans, but in the 1960s, it was the site of a high-profile civic improvement project started by civil rights leader Daisy Bates. In the first part of this two-part series, we’ll explore Mitchellville’s foundations and what it means to be a Black town. This episode is supported by the Arkansas Humanities Council.