KANEKO

KANEKO is a 501(c)(3) arts and culture non-profit organization dedicated to providing life-changing, creative experiences and multifaceted educational opportunities for the greater Omaha–Council Bluffs Metropolitan community through focused exhibitions and programming seasons. The KANEKO mission is to promote creative exploration and support artistic freedom through community collaboration, education, exhibitions, and public programming. Our purpose is exploring the creative process — how a new idea is born into the arts, sciences, and philosophy. We believe that there is no restriction for creative activity. Imagination has complete freedom. Supporting and promoting freedom in creativity is the KANEKO mission.

KANEKO exists to ensure each member of the community achieves a greater appreciation for creativity and how it can enrich/improve their lives, is able to identify and express the challenges of artistry, and is moved to discuss the diversity of creative thought in philanthropy, education, and the sciences. In doing so, KANEKO promotes innovation, cross-disciplinary collaboration, community engagement, and community development. With the majority of our offerings free to the public, KANEKO strives to maintain accessible programs and exhibitions that challenge our audience to think differently and see the benefits of creativity. This allows KANEKO to engage with diverse community, regional, national and international organizations and offer a wide range of programming that appeals to a broad audience.

Exhibitions display artist work that often ties in a social or environmental issue and paves the way to inspiration. For the next three years, KANEKO will exhibit five major exhibitions in conjunction with a partnership with MECA and the Riverfront project. KANEKO had been contracted to commission five internationally recognized artists to install a large-scale sculpture in the Gene Leahy Mall. 2023 will exhibit portions of three of the five artists in KANEKO, each bringing its own unique co-exhibitors and programming. Planned for 2023:

Richard Hunt Exhibition: MONUMENTAL (10/2022 - 2/2023) This exhibition featured over fifty metal pieces exploring Richard Hunt's long career. World-renowned sculptor Richard Hunt has singularly made the most significant contribution to public art in the United States; over 150 public sculpture commissions grace prominent locations in 24 states and Washington, D.C. Hunt has held over 150 solo exhibitions and is represented in more than 100 public museums across the globe, from California to Maine, Detroit to Birmingham, and Vienna to Jerusalem. The exhibition also features works by Chicago artist Faheem Majeed and Omaha artists Sarah Rowe and Charles Kay Jr., exploring each artist's stories, differing mediums, and history.

James Surls Exhibition: Nightshade and Red Bone (03/2023 – 08/2023) - This exhibition features new sculptures within a Surls retrospective context. A profound and unique sensibility to natural forms is evident in Surls’ work, and his relationship to the environment undergirds his creative process. James Surls received the 2020 Lifetime Achievement Award in Sculpture from The International Sculpture Center in recognition of an extraordinary career encompassing printmaking, drawing, and writing poetry. He was acknowledged in the US as one of the most preeminent sculptors of his generation. Surls’ body of work has achieved international acclaim, shown in major art museums and public and private collections throughout the world, including the Centro Cultural Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico City; The country of Singapore; Museum of Modern Art, NY; Smithsonian American Art Museum, DC; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, NY.

Linda Fleming Exhibition: Experimenta De Vacuo Spatio (10/2023 - 02/2024) - Fleming's works hint at the co-existence of the mundane and the cosmological, where two realities simultaneously exist, including the possibility that the past is also present. The sculptures are diagrams of thought that provide a glimpse of the strangeness beyond the everyday world, opening a place where an idea becomes tangible, history leaves a trace, and information exhales form. In this exhibition, Fleming will combine past structures from her first large-scale, rough-hewn wood and corten steel sculptures with new, contemporary fabricated sculptures to converse with one another. Fleming is primarily a sculptor, although drawing is essential to her work. She works in steel, wood, rubber, felt, and paper. Fleming's works are exhibited in major art museums and public and private collections throughout the world, including the Oakland Museum, the Albuquerque Museum, the Laumeier Sculpture Park in Sunset Hills, Missouri, the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, and the Sheldon Museum of Art at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, the American Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq, Private collection in Moscow, Russia, Private collection in Sydney, Australia, Twitter headquarters in San Francisco, CA, American Embassy in Amman Jordan, Burlingame Point, Facebook Campus, Burlingame, CA, BASE Community Center, Big Sky, MT, Peninsula Hotel in Shanghai, China, Hyatt Centric Victoria Harbour in Hong Kong, China.

Public Programs offer workshops, educational sessions, interactive performances, and lectures in conjunction with exhibits.

1. GREAT MINDS features innovators and original thought leaders who have demonstrated leadership within their fields and have a record of outstanding creativity and innovation.
2. MOVEMENT presents site-specific, multidisciplinary performances focused on modern and contemporary dance. Performances investigate the choreographic process, foster collaboration, and challenge audience perceptions of dance as an art form.
3. GENERATOR focuses on music by living composers, including sound improvisation and experimental composition, this series is an outlet for non-commercial music and investigation of music’s relationship to our physical world, seeking the connections between sound and architecture, natural landscapes, and the human body. 

Education Programs are centered around DEI and use targeted outreach to make artistic and creative experiences more available to groups facing opportunity gaps.

1. Creative Camps engage students with local professionals from STEAM and creativity professions.
2. Community After School offers the KANEKO education space and trauma-informed creativity workshops to Sudanese refugee youth.
3. Creative Careers provides middle and high school students in Council Bluffs with the opportunity to learn from local professionals with a passion for creativity in their world.
4. Through its Collaborative Partner Offerings, KANEKO supports local organizations’ programs by offering its space, supplies, and operational support (planning, coordination, implementation, and cleanup) so they can continue to serve their populations. Some partners include the Ollie Webb Center and Westside Community Schools.